9 Moves You Can Do Every Day to Improve Your Joint Mobility

Stretching and strength training are good for your muscles and cardio is good for your heart, but what about your joints? Unlike muscles, joints have no direct blood supply, so they rely on movement to keep them functioning properly.

"If there's no motion in the joint it will degenerate — that's a law," says Robert Bates, DC, a chiropractor and preventive care specialist in Manhattan Beach, California. Joints rely on synovial fluid to "wash" away waste products that build up and compromise the integrity of the joint, he says.

A daily joint-mobility routine can keep your joints healthy and prevent stiffness and muscle imbalances. It can also restore lost range of motion, making exercise more enjoyable, enhancing your athletic performance and protecting you from common aches and pains.

A single faulty joint affects the body as a whole, as the individual parts of the human body are meant to work synergistically, not independently. As long as there's not permanent damage in the joint, you can regain lost ranges of motion through preventive care, Bates says.

Additionally, joints that are able to move through their full range of motion allow connecting muscles to completely contract and expand, which gives muscles more strength and power and prevents injury, says Natacha Nelson, DC, a chiropractor in Hermosa Beach, California.

Both Bates and Nelson recommend performing daily self-assessments and joint-mobility exercises.

"If you look at life, maintenance is one of the key principles. It doesn't matter if you're maintaining your car, your lawn or your personal relationships. Once you stop maintaining it, it goes down. Same thing with your body," Bates says.

Try this full-body joint-mobility routine when you wake up in the morning, before your workouts or whenever you need to loosen up and free yourself of tension.

Today's digital culture means hours spent in front of the computer screen or staring down at a smartphone and can create postural deficiencies like forward-head posture, Bates says.

Forward-head posture causes stiffness in the joints in the cervical spine and elongates the muscles at the back of the neck and shoulders, creating knots and tension. Neck circles are a simple and effective exercise for releasing that tension.

The ball-and-socket joint of the shoulder is one of the most mobile joints in the human body, but due to improper posture, motion can deteriorate over time.

"Ergonomics is not enough. You must get the movement in the joints," says Bates, who recommends practicing proper posture in the workplace and taking breaks to get your joints moving as well as keeping them hydrated.

According to an August 2013 study published in the ‌Journal of Elbow and Shoulder Surgery‌, progressive stretching (like the above move) is the best way to treat post-surgery joint stiffness. But as Bates points out, you can help prevent the need for surgery with daily mobility drills.

"Every time you land, something has to absorb the shock," Nelson says. "The muscles, tendons and ligaments aren't designed to do it all." A stiff spine and tight hips means the impact is going to be translated to the muscles, tendons and ligaments.

"Over time, it leads to sprains, strains, knee and low-back pain," she says. So keep your lumbar spinal discs and hip sockets lubricated with pelvic circles.

This traditional yoga pose is excellent for opening up the thoracic spine and lubricating the discs. When your spine is out of alignment, neurological issues may arise.

"If you're not firing neurologically," Bates says, "you're going to create imbalances and movement-pattern problems. You've got to correct the neurological and then stabilize the structure of the spine."

Hip mobility may help provide relief from low-back pain. A 2011 study from the ‌Journal of Manual and Manipulative Therapy‌ reports that more than 60 percent of subjects reported improvements in chronic low-back pain after performing hip-mobility exercises.

If the hips aren't mobile, the body destabilizes the lower back or knees to compensate for the lost range-of-motion potential.

"The high degree of lower back pain and injuries and knee strain correlate directly to hip immobility — particularly from sustained sedentary seated lifestyle behaviors," says restorative mobility expert Scott Sonnon. According to Sonnon, the windshield wiper is a "high-yield benefactor of total health and performance."

Knee pain is often the result of loss of mobility at the hips, Sonnon says. This knee-circling exercise not only frees the muscles, tendons and ligaments around the knee joint, but it also frees the hips.

Mobilizing your ankles may be just what you need in order to let go of nagging running injuries and finally ditch that knee brace for good.

"The epidemic of plantar fasciitis and fallen arches is a result of the foot bones destabilizing in order to compensate for the ankle being incapable of absorbing and retranslating force," Sonnon says.

Ankle rolls restore movement to the joint and, as a result, re-stabilize knee alignment and helps prevent arches from falling, resolving pain from plantar fasciitis, he says.

Working at a computer all day, gripping heavy weights at the gym or having a history of past wrist strains can lead immobility in the wrists. This can make body-weight exercises like push-ups and certain yoga poses uncomfortable or even impossible. Wrist rolls can help facilitate those movements.