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I’m Hypermobile. What Does That Mean for Pole?

The words “hypermobile” and “Ehlers Danlos Syndrome” definitely make their way around the pole and aerial communities. Athletic arts like pole, aerial, and gymnastics often attract folks whose bodies allow greater degrees of freedom—but that doesn’t always mean those bodies are arriving in those positions safely. Hypermobile folks often have to do a lot of work on small stabilizing muscles in order to function in society, let alone in pole.

So, what is hypermobility?

Hypermobility is an excessive range of motion in joints. Joints move beyond their normal limits without pain or discomfort–but that doesn’t mean tissues aren’t getting damaged. One type of hypermobility is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). EDS is a group of disorders that affects all types of connective tissue-including skin, joints, and blood vessels. Folks with EDS have fragile skin, excessive range of motion in joints, and often GI issues if tissues of the digestive tract are affected.

In pole, hypermobility may present as subluxations (partial dislocations) when the pole creates cross pressure on a joint, excessive bruising, and sudden drops in blood pressure after physical exertion.

Living with Hypermobility

Being hypermobile doesn’t mean I’m automatically a contortionist. My hypermobility is most obviously present in my knees and elbows. I can’t just fall into perfect square splits or slither into a spatchcock with zero work. What it does mean is my knees often “bend backwards” especially when I’m doing a split in the air, and my elbows often “bow in” when working on handstands.

Here’s an example of both my knee and my elbow going into hyperextension. While the elbow isn’t great just tossing it into hyperextension like that, it’s less bad than the knee in this picture because it doesn’t have weight on it. There is so much weight in my leg and I had no idea my knee was going backwards.

Those are examples of hypermobility in sport. In addition to having to pay extra attention to where my limbs are during fitness, I also have to pay extra attention to my posture during the day to make sure I’m not letting my joints pop out of place. My knees have a nasty habit of subluxing. What I call a “gentle subluxation” doesn’t feel like much to me but sometimes the patella (knee cap) catches my meniscus (fluid sac that allows the knee to bend) on its way back into place and causes excruciating pain to the point I can’t unbend my knee on my own. On the bright side, the hypermobility is probably why I still have an intact meniscus as of my last MRI  (in both knees!) despite the number of times they’ve been pinched.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

There was a time when coaches told me to push into my hypermobility because it made my lines look better and I got praised for how much my knees go backwards–during that time I had more subluxations that lead to instability in the whole leg and had to spend a lot of time “grounded” because I didn’t trust my knees to stay in place while I was in the air.

What to do about it

When you know you have hypermobility, it’s important to know your body and your limits. You may struggle to learn these limits more so than your non-hypermobile classmates. Doing dedicated work on stabilizing your joints and working on proprioception (knowing where your body is in space) are a must. Working with coaches and physical therapists who understand hypermobility is also highly recommended.

Some resources to explore include:

 

Cora
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