06/30/2025
As a physical therapist who lives with hypermobility, I’ve spent years figuring out how to feel strong, stable, and confident in my body, and helping my clients do the same. One of the most powerful tools I’ve found? Strength training.
When people with hypermobility come to me, they’re often in pain, feeling frustrated, and worried that exercise might make things worse. They’ve been told they’re “too flexible,” that they need to stretch less or avoid certain movements. But what’s usually missing from the conversation is what they can and should do to build resilience: strengthen their bodies intentionally.
Strength training isn’t just safe for hypermobile individuals, it’s essential.
Hypermobility means that our joints move beyond normal limits and our muscles have to constantly overcompensate to create stability. Without a strong foundation of muscle support, the risk of injury, fatigue, and chronic pain increases. That’s why I help clients shift their mindset from flexibility to strength and stability.
Here’s how I approach strength training for hypermobility:
- Form over load: Proper alignment and motor control are more important than heavy weights. I’d rather see 3 perfect reps than 15 shaky ones.
- Slow, controlled movements: We train the brain and body to move with awareness, reducing injury risk and improving proprioception.
- Progressive overload: Building strength takes time. It will be a gradual process of loading over a long period of time.
- Core and postural stability: We focus on the deep stabilizing muscles that support joints and help reduce compensation patterns.
- Energy and recovery awareness: Many hypermobile individuals also deal with fatigue or dysautonomia, so we take a holistic approach, working with the nervous system, not against it.
- Personalized approach: Every person is unique and no one has the exact same experience, injury history, and pain presentation. It is so important to take an individualized approach to volume of exercise, intensity of exercise, length of recovery and recovery tools needed to maximize your program.
Strength training for hypermobility has helped me feel more comfortable in my own body. It’s taken me from feeling uncomfortable and painful to feeling empowered, and that’s the transformation I want for every client I work with.
If you’re hypermobile and feel like your body’s working against you, know this: you can build strength, stability, and confidence. You just need the right plan, and someone who truly understands.
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