3 Easy Ways to Strengthen Your Joints and Tendons
You work to build stronger muscles, but what about your joints and tendons?
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You can build up monster quads and shape diamond-cut calves, but that won't do much for your bones and joints. As a cyclist, you’re already doing those hinge and ball-and-socket joints some good by keeping them active, says Philadelphia-area orthopedic surgeon Nicholas A. DiNubile, M.D., best-selling author of FrameWork. “Movement and mobility are essential for good joint health,” he says. But cycling alone isn’t enough to give them all the load—and love—they need to stay their strongest. So to protect your bones, you need to learn how to strengthen your joints. Here, three simple strategies that do just that.
Warm Up Your Joints, and Keep Them Warm
Your tendons and ligaments are made of collagen, which doesn’t get a lot of blood flow. Without blood flow, those tissues, which DiNubile likens to rubber bands, get stiff and crackly like dried-out elastic. “Cycling boosts circulation through your joints—particularly throughout the lower body—and helps fortify the connective tissues and muscles around the joints,” he says. “But it’s important to perform a good warmup, especially as you get older, to give your joints time to receive that boost in blood flow and loosen up.” Likewise, keep your knees covered when it’s chilly outside (below 60 to 65 degrees is a good benchmark). Otherwise, your knees can’t warm up properly and your risk for injury increases.
Strength Train, Then Slow It Down
Cycling is non-weight-bearing, which is good because it makes the sport accessible to people of all sizes and fitness levels. But just as you need a little weight-bearing activity to build strong bones, your joints become more resilient with a little healthy stress, as well, says DiNubile. “Wolff’s law—that a bone will adapt to the loads under which it’s placed—also applies to your tendons and ligaments,” he says. The easiest way to do that is basic strength training, such as squats, step-ups and leg presses.
For optimum joint strengthening, slow down your repetitions on the eccentric or lowering phase of the exercise, such as when you’re lowering into the squat position. You recruit fewer muscles during the eccentric phase of an exercise, so your joints carry more load and become stronger. “Eccentric exercise has proven especially beneficial for tendons and is even used to improve tendon injuries like tendonopathy,” says DiNubile.
Move Sideways More Often
When you ride a bike, you’re moving almost entirely in the sagittal (that’s front to back) plane as you churn the pedals and move forward. That doesn’t do much to strengthen your joints in the frontal plane—or side to side—motion. That means your joints may be less stable when you have to step off the bike or during off-the-bike activity. “It’s a good idea to train the neural pathways that you don’t get in straight line activity, because it also improves your proprioception and balance,” says DiNubile. Adding a few lateral exercises like side lunges and side step-ups to your strength training routine can do the trick. You can also do side steps with resistance bands to up the ante.
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