Maintaining healthy joints

[LostArra]

The Longevity Business is the new economic fitness bubble.

 

[Marbles]

Soreness on impact, such as a hard step or jump, and occasional extended aches/stiffness. It can happen with either knee, but only occurs in my left hip. I work out 3 to 4 times a week--40 minutes on the treadmill, rower, or the airdyne, 20 minutes of weights, and 10 minutes of stretching.

The question this makes me want answered, is how are you landing. "Soft knees" meaning the knee is bent and the muscle takes the load reduces the amount of force transmitted through bones and joints. If impact hurts, it suggests the muscles are not absorbing an adequate amount of the load.

Interestingly, it feels like one of the first things to go with injury is soft landings. This is because the brain starts protectively offloading muscular load around a joint. This then leads to muscular deconditioning over time which makes everything worse.

The answer to not having soft knees is generally to get stronger. Probably good to focus on the eccentric portion of a movement as well (don't drop the bar after a DL, slow decent on squat, Etc.). After all, locked knees are the brain avoiding eccentric quad loading.

Box step down are a nice check in, you can run the same test on stairs. Basically you are testing the load bearing leg, which is on the box or upper stair (walking down stairs), slowly lower your foot and very gently touch your heal without transferring weight. There is something different about this than lowering for a squat, and when I first started I literally couldn't go through the full ROM with control and would heavily come down on the leading leg.

How long it takes really depends on how bad things are. I got better pretty quick because I started with good strength, had about a month of bad issues, then started strength training. Most of mine was retraining my brain as there hadn't been enough time for significant strength loss.

On the brain, it does all sorts of things to insure we can do things safely, it is not always correct in what it does, but training is about more than muscles. The brain will turn off power if it perceives instability either in a joint or induced by the environment. It will also limit power to what it feels the weakest link can handle. Grip is a great example, do something (pull-up or lift) with a good closed grip starting with the movement loaded and see how much power you can put into it (AKA speed of movement), then induce an unstable grip with something like a coke can sized bar (even better if it free spins and your forearms have to stabilize it), now try to do the movement with power. The condition of the prime movers are the same, but the drop in power generation is pretty noticeable.

 

[3325]

Are there any supplements or exercises that have helped keep your joints in good shape?

I believe you have received some good advice on this thread. I have just one thing to add: Incorporate isometrics or static holds. These have a long tradition in martial arts, rehabilitation programs, and powerlifters have even used them to overcome sticking points in their lifts.

The two most useful ones to improve joint stability for someone with lower body aches are probably the horse stance and the invisible chair/wall sit. If you don’t know what these are, you can find plenty of examples on the internet.

You can incorporate them in different ways, but I like to do them before a set of squats, or lunges, or whatever it is I’m doing for a primary movement. So they’re sort of like a warmup or a “muscle primer” if you will. If I hold a wall sit for a minute, everything around the knee seems to tighten up. Then, after I walk around and shake it out for a minute, I can do a set of squats and not get snap, crackle, and pop.