09/20/2026
I wish more therapists understood Ehlers Danlos genetics 💙
🤍🦓 “If I’m Hypermobile, Why Do My Muscles Feel SO Tight?
It’s one of the most confusing things about living in a hypermobile body. You’re told your joints move too much, yet your neck and shoulders feel like concrete. Your back is constantly tight. Muscles spasm, knots come right back, and no matter how much you stretch, sometimes it feels like your body just refuses to let go.
So you stretch more. You massage the tight spots. You dig into the knots. Maybe you’ve been told you simply need to loosen up. But what if those tight muscles aren’t simply the problem? What if they’re actually part of the solution your body has come up with to protect you?
When a joint doesn’t provide the stability your nervous system expects, the muscles around it may have to work much harder to help control movement and provide stability. Over time, that protective response can become exhausting and painful. And it can create one of the strangest realities of hypermobility: you can be too mobile and incredibly tight at the same time.
This is also why simply stretching every muscle that feels tight may not always be the answer. Sometimes that tightness is telling us something important about why the body feels the need to keep those muscles working so hard.
In his newest article, Dr. Addison explains the relationship between flexibility and stability, why protective muscle tension can become so exhausting, why some of the things we instinctively do to loosen tight muscles may not always help, and what he believes needs to happen before the body can begin to let some of that guarding go.
He also explains where Frequency Specific Microcurrent and hypermobility-specific stability work fit into the approach we use in our clinic.
If you’ve ever wondered how you can possibly be this flexible and still feel this tight, I think this one will make a lot of sense. 🤍🦓
Read Dr. Addison’s full article here:
👉 https://www.addisonsportsclinic.com/blog/hypermobility-feeling-tight
Belinda Addison
Fellow Zebra and EDS Coordinator
Ehlers-Danlos and Hypermobility Clinic at Addison’s