Workout Gear for Hypermobile CrossFit Athletes
If you’re a CrossFitter, getting new gear is always exciting, whether it’s customized swag from your local box, new workout shoes, equipment to add to your garage gym, or a mobility tool to help you recover quicker between workouts. In this post, I’ll share some gear I’ve found useful for hypermobile athletes from my perspective as a coach, physical therapist, and CrossFit athlete who’s dealt with the drawbacks and advantages of hypermobility.
The equipment I’ve chosen here can be useful for every CrossFitter. While some practitioners are reluctant to recommend it because there can be issues if you become over-reliant, these tools can help provide extra support and stability. Workout equipment and tools can also provide extra proprioceptive feedback to increase your awareness of how your body is moving during training.
Workout gear and tools can help you keep training and assist you in moving better while you are working on improving your mobility, strength, and stability.
Workout gear can be helpful and provide support - just don’t get carried away!
Wrist Wraps
Wrist wraps are usually made from reinforced fabric and often feature elastic so they stretch and Velcro for adjustability and a snug fit. Wraps add support and stability to the wrist joint, which bears a lot of load in these movements:
weightlifting in the front rack and overhead positions
cleans
front squats
thrusters
snatches
overhead squats
overhead press
push press
jerks
gymnastics
handstands
kipping pull-ups
ring dips
muscle-ups
There are elastic and fabric wrist wraps.
Wrist wraps can provide stability and support.
These exercises can all place a lot of stress on the wrist joint, particularly during high-volume sets and WODs. The front rack position, overhead squats, and handstands can be more uncomfortable as they are usually held for a longer period of time with the wrist loaded in extension.
The wrist can get irritated and painful due to mobility restrictions, but more often from weakness in the joint and surrounding tissues. Many times these are new positions for people and it takes time for the wrist to adjust and gain tolerance to these new positions.
Weightbearing helps improve bone density, muscle strength, and the strength of ligaments and tendons. Even if your wrists get sore, continued weight bearing is important to build up resiliency. Wrist wraps can help you do so by taking some of the stress off the wrist joint. They’re not rigid like a brace but offer more dynamic support and help it feel like there’s less load on the wrist.
When I first started CrossFit, high-rep overhead squats and push presses were painful on my wrist. By using wraps for a few years, I strengthened my wrists to the point that I rarely need the extra stability anymore.
The biggest key to using wrist wraps successfully is to avoid doing movements you don’t feel comfortable with to some degree without them. Don’t make the mistake of adding more weight than you’d normally do. Otherwise, your wrists might feel like they can handle extra load, but if your shoulders can’t yet, you’re increasing the risk of a sprain or dislocation (even if you do shoulder accessory exercises to increase strength and stability). So with wrist wraps, stick with a load that you’re comfortable with!
Knee Sleeves
Knee sleeves for CrossFit often come in two thickness options – 3mm and 5mm – and are usually made of neoprene. They’re not the same as a knee brace, which limits joint mobility after injury or surgery. Instead, knee sleeves offer some stability to the knee joint. They can be helpful if you have loose or mobile kneecaps or experience a feeling of knee instability during squats or lunges.
Knee sleeves provide support to the knee joint.
Knee sleeves come in a variety of thicknesses.
Wearing knee sleeves can also help if you’ve had an acute issue like a patellar subluxation. A few years ago I had a patellar subluxation doing a burpee. My kneecap hit the floor first and then subluxed out to the side. Wearing knee sleeves helped me feel more confident during my rehab.
If you’re a hypermobile CrossFit athlete looking to build lower body strength, improve tendon strength, or work on unilateral (single-leg) exercises, knee sleeves can help you feel more secure at the joint by offering compression and support.
Knee sleeves also keep your joints warm, which can feel good if you have joint stiffness or tendon pain, or struggle with more chronic conditions like tendinopathy or persistent knee pain, which are all common in hypermobile athletes.
Another benefit of knee sleeves is that they provide more input to your nervous system during movement, which can improve proprioception and balance. Using this gear might give you more awareness of where your knees are in space during certain exercises, like if you struggle with knee valgus (knee caving inward) during squats. Any proprioceptive feedback can be helpful to the hypermobile athlete.
Weightlifting Belts
Increasing intra-abdominal pressure is a key component of an effective bracing strategy, particularly during heavy reps. A combination of this and core stability can help decrease compression and stress on the spine which can lead to low back issues.
Pairing an appropriate breathing technique like the Valsalva Maneuver with a weightlifting belt can provide a greater benefit than using either alone. Many research articles support the use of a weightlifting belt to increase intraabdominal pressure and contribute to greater trunk and spine stabilization. This article showed up to a 40% increase in intraabdominal pressure (IAP) using a belt during squats.
A weightlifting belt can be made of tough fabric or durable leather. Both can provide feedback during compound exercises like squats and deadlifts or accessory exercises, all of which can be challenging for hypermobile athletes who lack kinesthetic awareness.
There’s more of a learning curve to using a weight belt than with wrist wraps or knee sleeves, so you might benefit from a sports physical therapist or experienced CrossFit coach guiding you.
Wearing a weightlifting belt helps give me feedback to maintain my core bracing during lifts.
A weightlifting belt can also be beneficial during heavier overhead exercises such as overhead squats or presses. There’s a tendency to hyperextend the lower back during these exercises especially if you lack overhead mobility or core stability during overhead movements.
I previously had a low back injury due to a lack of stability with overhead movements like push presses and jerks and losing my core bracing when catching jerks. Wearing a weight belt really helped give me extra support but more importantly the awareness of keeping my core braced.
A belt can help provide feedback and give you a cue to brace and maintain your bracing during the entire movement. This constant feedback is helpful for everyone, especially those with hypermobility.
You should avoid relying on a weightlifting belt, even if you have back pain or feel like you can’t brace properly without it. Though belts can be helpful, you don’t want to use one without properly learning how to brace and create intraabdominal pressure when lifting. I recommend only using one with weights over 80% of your one-rep max and with lighter loads, only if you have a lot of lifting experience and awareness of your bracing strategy.
Lifters and Crossfit Shoes
Weightlifting shoes ,or lifters, provide stability and ankle mobility for the Olympic lifts
Every CrossFit athlete loves their shoes!
There are several reasons that people who compete in Olympic weightlifting wear specialized shoes. Lifters offer extra stability due to the stiff sole They decrease side-to-side shifting that running or cross-training shoes with softer midsoles might encourage. They also offer a strong upper and bulky strap for added support and an elevated feel.
You can utilize weightlifting shoes when squatting, as the raised heel helps with ankle mobility which helps many athletes squat lower and have a more upright torso. They’re an alternative to placing change plates (small weight plates) under your heels.
The added stability of lifting shoes can help hypermobile athletes. There is more feedback through the ground during a snatch or clean and jerk which helps with leg drive and feeling more connected.
For more dynamic movements, like running and jumping, you can switch them out for other CrossFit metcon style shoes. These are also different than traditional running shoes because they have less cushion in the sole which helps provide more stability during lifting. There are many different types:
Nike Metcon (my favorite)
The key is to find the best and most comfortable shoe for you that also provides adequate stability.
Mobility Tools
Massage guns are a great way to target muscle tightness or soreness.
This suggestion might seem counterintuitive, as you’d assume hypermobile athletes have an adequate range of motion. This is usually true, but as mentioned in previous posts, people with hypermobility often feel tight while not actually having short muscles. While static stretching has its place for most people, we hypermobile folks often benefit more from active soft tissue work and self-massage.
Using a foam roller, lacrosse ball, massage gun, or TRS Supernova 2.0 mobility ball before or after a workout can improve that feeling of tightness.
Utilizing it as part of your CrossFit WOD warmup can provide feedback to your nervous system that heightens your sense of body positioning and awareness. This is especially helpful if you struggle to feel activation in muscles like your glutes (which is common with hypermobile athletes).
You can also include a mobility band in your warm-up. I would recommend keeping warm-ups more dynamic and active versus doing passive stretching.
After using mobility tools, it can be helpful to focus on activation and accessory exercises that are specific to the movements you are training that day.
Need more guidance? Reach out today to learn more about my customized CrossFit programming for hypermobile athletes.
