Hypermobility and Joint Pain: How to Manage It With Exercise

If you've ever been told you're "double-jointed", or you can bend your thumb back to your wrist without trying, you may have joint hypermobility. For some people this is just a harmless party trick. For others, it comes with a less welcome side effect: joints that ache, click, feel unstable, or give way during everyday activities like walking, carrying shopping, or training at the gym.

Hypermobility itself isn't a diagnosis of doom, and it doesn't mean your joints are "broken". But it does mean your joints move through a bigger range than most people's, often because the ligaments and connective tissue holding them together are naturally more elastic. That extra range has to be controlled by something — and that something is your muscles. When the muscles around a hypermobile joint aren't strong or coordinated enough to do that job, the joint ends up doing more work than it should, which is where the pain, clicking, and "giving way" sensations tend to come from.

Why hypermobility causes pain

Think of a joint as a door hinge. A normal hinge has a bit of give, but it's held firmly in its housing. A hypermobile joint is more like a slightly loose hinge — it still works, but it wobbles more than it should, and over time that wobble irritates the surrounding tissue. Shoulders, knees, ankles, and fingers are common trouble spots, though hypermobility can affect any joint in the body, including the spine.

This is why hypermobile joints often ache after activities that wouldn't bother most people — standing for a long time, typing at a desk, or running on pavement. It's rarely about doing "too much" in an absolute sense; it's that the joint isn't being adequately supported through that particular movement or position.

Why stretching more usually isn't the answer

A common instinct when a joint feels stiff or achy is to stretch it. For hypermobile joints, this can actually make things worse. If your ligaments are already lax, pushing further into an already generous range of movement gives your muscles even more distance to control, without adding any stability. Many hypermobile patients we see have spent months stretching a "tight" hip or shoulder that was never tight to begin with — it was unstable, and the brain was interpreting that instability as tightness.

The more useful question isn't "how do I get more mobile?" but "how do I get my muscles to properly control the mobility I already have?" That's a strength and control problem, not a flexibility problem.

Building joint stability the right way

The good news is that hypermobile joints respond very well to the right kind of exercise. The key principles are:

• Strengthen through the full range, not just the middle. Hypermobile joints are often reasonably strong in mid-range but weak at end-range — the outer edges of movement where instability is most likely. Controlled, end-range strengthening (rather than avoiding those positions altogether) builds real resilience.
• Prioritise control over load. Slow, deliberate movement with good technique matters more than heavy weights early on. Once control is established, load can be built up progressively.
• Train little and often. Hypermobile joints tend to do better with frequent, moderate strength work than occasional intense sessions, because the muscles need consistent input to maintain good joint positioning day to day.
• Address the whole kinetic chain. A hypermobile knee, for example, is often influenced by hip and ankle control too, so a good programme rarely trains one joint in isolation.

This is exactly the kind of structured, progressive approach covered in strength and conditioning work — building a programme around your specific joints, your goals, and your current level of control, rather than a generic set of exercises pulled from the internet.

Staying active with hypermobility

Hypermobility doesn't have to mean stepping back from the activities you enjoy. Runners with hypermobile ankles or knees, for instance, usually do very well once their calf, glute, and foot strength catches up with their range of movement, and this is often part of preparing well for marathon training rather than a reason to avoid it. Gym-goers with hypermobile shoulders can usually keep lifting, provided technique and scapular control are prioritised over simply chasing heavier weights. The goal isn't to avoid movement — it's to make sure your muscles are doing enough of the stabilising work that your ligaments were never designed to do alone.

When it's worth getting assessed

A bit of joint looseness with no pain rarely needs treatment. But if you're getting recurring joint pain, swelling, a sense that a joint is "giving way", or you've had a few minor sprains in the same joint over time, it's worth having it properly assessed. A physiotherapist can identify which joints and movement patterns are driving your symptoms, and build a strengthening plan around them — something generic advice or online exercise videos usually can't do, because hypermobility looks different in every patient.

At Method Physiotherapy, this is a big part of what we do through physiotherapy assessment and rehabilitation, and for those already managing ongoing discomfort, our pain relief approach focuses on calming symptoms while the underlying stability work takes effect. If your joints have been aching, clicking, or feeling unreliable for a while, it's worth coming in for an assessment at our Vauxhall clinic so we can look at what's actually going on and build a plan that keeps you moving comfortably.