Mad finger joints
One thing I’ve experimented with more since doing the Functional Range Conditioning (FRC from now on) course last month is, wait for it, this is going to be amazing…. joint circles. Now, I am sure you were waiting for something revolutionary and mind-blowing, but let me explain the why and how behind doing joint circles, or as FRC calls them, “controlled articular rotations”, or CARS for short. Kind of wanky? Sure, but give it a chance.
CAR is an active rotational movement at the outer range of the joint. They differ from typical joint circles you see in retirement villages in that they are done by locking the rest of the body in place and moving only, and only from the joint you want to move while applying tension.
Why CARS
First, doing CARS will tell you which joint you need to work on (if any) to move better.
To keep this simple, let’s say you want to do shoulder CARS. As you can see in the video, I am locked in place, and except for the glenohumeral joint, the rest of my body is still. If I struggle to bring my arm past my ear, or I can only do it while bending my elbow or by bringing my head forward, I have a mobility problem in the shoulder joint that I need to address.
Now, depending on what’s going on in the shoulder, I might need some intervention, done by me if I am lucky, or by a manual therapist if the problem requires manual techniques and skills. If it’s beyond manual therapy, it could mean surgery, or it could mean that it’s beyond repair. Who knows. But I don’t want to go all morbid on you; all I am saying is that there are different reasons for different issues.
If you take nothing else from the above paragraph, at least take this:
If the joint doesn’t move properly, you know that you need to address it or modify your training to stay out of the range you don’t have/can’t control.
Why does any of this matter?
Because if your shoulder doesn’t move like a human shoulder should move and you can’t control it without holding external resistance, what do you think will happen to your shoulder in the long term if you keep forcing into unstable/mobile ranges? It’s either the shoulder joint or other joints that have to compensate because of your shitty shoulder. Either way, something gotta give.
For example, I’ve had shoulder issues in the past, and they’ve caused me some upper back shittyness and whatnot because I did what I should’ve not done, although I knew that I shouldn’t do it (still with me?) until I improved the shoulder. Instead of addressing the shoulder, I kept at it because my ego told me to do so (how’s that for not taking responsibility for my actions?) Because of the overhead press, that’s why.
Second, CARS will maintain the range of motion in the joint and help joint health and longevity.
The collection of cells in your body gets replaced over time. The language of cells is force, which you apply through movement, signalling the body where the new cells need to be laid. Your body will remove cells from where they are not needed and add more to where they are required. So, if you are not taking your joints through specific ranges of motion over time, the body will stop adding cells to those ranges, which leads to a loss in the range of motion. Consider what happens to an injured limb when it’s kept in a sling for an extended period.
In other words, you speak to your cells and tell them what you want them to do. If you are mute, meaning you don’t speak movement to your cells (because they only understand force), they have no fucking idea what to do. Cells be all like, “I dunno”, and do whatever, lay tissue haphazardly to random places. It’s like you hire a guy to paint your house, asking him to show up at 8 am and leaving him to his own devices without instructions. Then you show up 10 hours later, and your neighbour has gotten pink walls and an orange carpet.
Also worth noting is that cartilage in joints doesn’t have its blood supply but receives oxygen and nutrition from the surrounding joint by diffusion. Simply said, movement pressure takes fluid and nasty stuff out of the cartilage. When the pressure is relieved, fluid goes back in with oxygen and all the excellent junk that makes the cartilage go apeshit, in a good way. Hence, your body produces “happy feelings” when you move; it wants to encourage movement because it’s good for the joints.
So, with clear instructions, you can morph your cells and body over time by talking to it using movement and force. Same way as you would be when getting yoked lifting weights.
There’s more to poor joints than old age and lack of fish oil
People think that age takes away the range of motion. Yes, there is a change in the tissue over time, but it is mainly because we stop using specific ranges for 20 years. Because of life, family, job, and that damn BMW SUV that never requires you to squat down, whatever. Then we wonder why we don’t have the same ranges of motion we had 20 years ago.
The squat is a great example; if you never squat deep, the joints will take away take range you once had because it deems it unnecessary.
As you’ve been doing CARS, your mechanoreceptors (the sense organs that respond to mechanical stimuli) in the joint are all activated, and you have better control of the joint at the outer ranges. So that if you have to go to those ranges, for whatever reason, such as scissor kicking a shark, your body knows how to control those ranges. That’s resiliency at its best. Ask any shark that’s been scissor kicked in the face, and they’ll tell you the same.
I’ve been doing CARS every morning lately and recommend you do the same. Keep your range by giving your tissues the stimulus to do so. And you do not have to have the full range of motion to do CARS, do what your body allows you to do, and don’t do CARS into pain.
Why at the outer ranges?
Because it allows you to access all of the mechanoreceptors in the joint.
Why active instead of loose helicopter movements from the retirement village joint circle championships (or RVJCC)?
We want the movement to be active because doing it passively or without tension won’t access those same mechanoreceptors. There can be value in doing passive foam rolling and other “mobility” exercises, but eventually, you will have to be able to work in that range actively. Otherwise, you’ll have false mobility, meaning you cannot control your range: all show and no go.
How to do CARS
And now, the morning routine I do each morning (and stole from FRC). I’ve left out the patella. Ran out of storage in the phone. But not really. Also, don’t let my facial expressions in the neck part throw you off; I can’t help it.
The Procedure
- Trap the air at the lower abdomen and brace; breathe shallow. Create 10-20% of the maximum tension you can and move through the ranges, one joint at a time.
- Stabilize other joints.
- Slowly rotate at the outer range.
- Try to expand each rep.
- For capsular CARS, hold the end range as long as possible. (especially if you’ve just gained a new range of motion and need to “own it”, meaning you want to have control of that range)
I also do something similar for warm-ups by bringing the tension closer to 80% or even 100%. I don’t want to pop a brain vessel doing the same thing fresh out of bed wearing my pyjamas.
If you do higher tension CARS, bring up your core temperature first. Even He-Man can’t go zero to a hundred in a millisecond.
Now, go make non-retirement-village circles.