The inventor of Pilates, Joseph Pilates, famously said: “You’re only as old as your spine.” If you’re like most people, this sends a shiver from your tailbone to the top of your head. When speaking about joint health and joint pain, we tend to get a little defeatist. Most people begin by qualifying their body parts: bad ankles, old knees, or a tricky back.
But here’s the biggest shocker—joint pain doesn’t have to be something normal we must accept as we mature. Our joints don’t have to “just age” with no chance for reversal. Inside each of us, there’s a mechanism to keep our joints young and healthy—the brain. And it can rebuild joints at any age. It just takes time.
Why Joint Pain Doesn’t Have to be the Norm
“Welcome to your thirties,” is something you might have heard from someone trying to explain why everything starts to hurt once you leave your youthful 20s. It’s a (counterproductive) way of normalizing the discomfort of joints that have begun to rust over. It seems that, as a society, we expect things to physically progress downhill from there.
Personally, as a fitness trainer and mobility expert, I don’t accept that. As the body ages, it makes some sense that everything starts to deteriorate. But how come some cultures and people can maintain a deep squat throughout even the later stages of life? The solution is pretty simple: use it or lose it.
The defeatist mentality with joint health often ties back to a busy lifestyle, no time to improve it, and doctors who offer surgeries to fix it fast. But by the way, surgery won’t save you from months of physical therapy to recuperate. Hot take, but try to start with the physical therapy first—as “prehab”—instead of having to do surgery, and then rehab.
Sometimes surgery is a solution, but we all know the stories of the multiple do-over surgeries, and the “it’s never been the same” outcome. Time is the key here. Oh, to have more time! Our priorities are fascinating, and how sad that our joints get neglected. If given enough time and attention, our joints are incredibly adaptable and can change on the biological level.
How Joint Pain Happens
Don’t believe me? Remember that our joints adapted biologically to where they’re at now—and that it didn’t happen overnight. Our joints reflect what we repeat, so kyphosis in the upper back (rounded shoulder) is an outcome of daily slouching. Slouching is actually not a bad thing, but it becomes a problem when there’s no antithesis. Tummy time for babies should never end, let’s hear it for tummy time to prevent slouching for adults!
Our joints don’t “age,” some of us just stop using them as we grow older. This is relative to our lifestyles and each joint’s daily demands. Gardeners, construction workers, farmers, plus anyone who still hunts and gathers for a living may have less joint dysfunction as they age due to their active lifestyles.
Sitting at a desk for eight hours a day, we’re at risk of becoming chair-shaped ourselves if the joints don’t receive the tender love and care they deserve on the regular.
How to Prevent Joint Pain and Reverse Joint Aging
How would one continue to condition the full body for longevity? Mobility training has entered the group chat.
Just like taking nutritional supplements, mobility training (there are plenty of options on obé!) offers a healthy opportunity for the joints we don’t regularly use in our lives. Mobility training is best approached through slow, mindful movement. The mindful component of this supplemental work is everything; enhancing neuromuscular efficiency takes time and focus.
The faster we move, the more our reflexes—aka the memory of yesterday’s movement patterns—take over. If the goal is to develop new, healthier ways of moving, moving at a glacial pace can be the fastest way to grow.
10 Expert Tips for Taking Care of Your Joints
- Get to know your joints: Spend time exploring your joints full range of motion everyday, ideally isolated circular movements (think: rolling your wrists or ankles).
- Move as slowly as possible: Momentum will always repeat results based on your brain’s memory of pain and feeling safe. To increase capacity in the joint for new ranges, avoid pain and persist through the discomfort of slowing down.
- Spread the wealth: Whichever joints receive the least amount of attention daily deserve the most mobility work at some point throughout the day. (Wiggle your toes in slow motion at your work desk, get to know the muscles in the feet and lower legs that isolate the toes.)
- Pick up heavy things: Not only are there hormonal and muscular benefits to weight training, but putting our joints through a healthy amount of stress regularly keeps the body prepared for life’s daily physical demands. (Injuries occur when the load exceeds how prepared the muscle or joint connective tissue is for it.)
- Don’t skip it: The consequences of rarely brushing your teeth are a given, and so are the consequences of neglecting your joints.
- Progress, not perfection: Keep your joints moving mindfully, work on isolating each of them, and stay in it for the long haul. Each moment you spend learning your joints is an investment in your future.
- Practice your posture: I sometimes feel like I’m in a competition with gravity while I type on my computer. Every few minutes I sit up straight and try to locate the muscles in my upper back that keep my head from falling forward. Inevitably, I end up shrimping over my computer, and then I try again, persistently reminding my body I want the capacity for both postures.
- Stay active: Pickleball, walking, gardening, playing with kids, cleaning the garage—you don’t have to be an athlete or gym rat to maintain healthy joints.
- Record yourself doing mobility exercises: I learn a humbling lesson every time I do this. Be your own best, gentlest, teacher.
- Give it time: Think about how long it took for your joints to develop to your current mobility. Don’t worry if the results aren’t immediate.
Remember: Slow and Steady is the Name of the Game
Gone are the days of diet and workout trends claiming some kind of expedited secret sauce. Too many of us have subscribed to an advertised shortcut, and then either fell off the wagon or lost hope when the results weren’t as promised. The truth is that it takes 6-10 weeks for our biology to change. Even better, give it 6-10 months and then we’re really cooking with gas.
Often when the joint dysfunction presents more pain than what one is comfortable with, it feels like a roadblock or even a dead end. “No pain, no gain,” has a thread of truth to it, but perhaps “a little pain is normal for progress” would be the more clumsy, less catchy type of bumper sticker.
The reality is that pain is normal and can be a useful tool for how we learn about our joints. Think of pain as a smoke alarm, a signal to pay attention to, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a fire to put out.
Becoming familiar with different types of pain and learning how to identify when the joint pain is workable or a no-go can help us progress through the strengthening and mobilizing of the joint. An easy rule of thumb, relative to your own pain tolerance, is to keep the pain below a 4/10 (if a 10 is excruciating). If the painful spot hurts the next day, you’ve gone too far too fast. Pain is how our joints communicate with us, and sometimes, they just need to be heard.
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