Double-Jointed Kettlebell Cracking
My elbows and knees are double-jointed — the medical term for that is “hypermobility” — and you can imagine that hypermobility might be an issue in any exercise regimen, especially one like Kettlebells that tests form, muscle and joint stability. Sometimes a joint cracks with sinovial joy, and not ball and socket distress.
As a child, I would sit in school on the floor, with my arm locked, and the kids around me would scream that my arm was broken! My arm was not broken. It was just holding me up, bent backward, and locked in the double-jointed position.
In graduate school, I had a Martial Arts classmate who loved to sneak up behind me while we were standing, and “Karate Kick” my locked knee so I would tip over, and fall to the ground. It was a little painful to frequently have a locked, double-jointed, knee kicked into the unlocked position by someone you trusted, and considered a collaborator, and a friend — but such is the stake of an Ivy League graduate school program with a wild variety of talents, and personalities. You can’t pick your pesterers.
Kettlebells can be demanding on your joints. Check out my Gear and Witches page that details my Golfer’s Elbow issues — issues that I directly relate to my jointed hypermobility.
Hypermobility and Kettlebells can be scary when you start. Your biceps get stretched just a little bit more to the elbow joint when you’re hypermobile in a Swing. Your knees stretch your leg muscles just a little bit more when you lock out your knees and snap your hips during a Kettlebell workout.
I asked several doctors, and some of my professional online associates for their feedback on how to handle my multi-joint hypermobility with Kettlebells, and there were two, distinct, camps. The first camp said not to allow the full range of hypermobility; I should stop the movement at the normal range. The other camp said, just work it out, gently and slowly, at first, to build up recognition of your joints with the new Kettlebell exercises, and then the hypermobility won’t feel so extreme the next day.
After some apt some experimentation, I quickly realized I had no idea what a normal range of action was for my joints because I had never experienced that average before — my elbows, and knees, just move as they do — with me or without me deciding to actively hyper-extend or not. So, I decided to just go with the full range of motion I naturally had, and to no longer worry about that which I could not really control. You lock, and you stretch, as your body is made. We are all different.
After a few days of Kettlebell practice, my total range of motion was restored. I felt my biceps growing in length and getting even stronger in the full extension of my hypermobility. My knees never really gave me any trouble, but I knew I had to adjust the timing of my pendulum Swing to give my hyper-extended knees a few more milliseconds to unwrap themselves from the tangle of my full extension so they would be free to continue the proper locking and unlocking needed to create a consistent, and predictable, Swing using more than one focal loci of final determination.
Hypermobility is not just a thing, it’s a thang.
