Glide The Joints While You Work The Muscles

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of compressing the client’s midback at the beginning of a session as they lie prone. And you’ve probably felt ribcages that were not buoyant and compressible. What you’re feeling is partly the tone of the muscles with resultant restriction, but it’s mostly restriction of the joints themselves – in the spine and especially between the spine and the ribs. It’s easy and quick to micromobilize the joints themselves, and it won’t just help you compress the ribs, it will help you release muscles and improve outcomes after the massage.

Even a child of three knows that muscles move bones at joints (if you find one that doesn’t know, have them call me). That means that if you release muscles and the joint remains stuck, the muscles on the long side won’t be able to contract effectively, and the muscles on the short side will have to stay short, no matter how soft they are when you finish. And if you just mobilize and do nothing else (did someone say “chiropractor”?), the shortness and high tone of the muscles will pull the joint back into restriction.

That’s why I’m a renegade chiropractor: I spend half an hour to an hour, and I mix bodywork with micromobilization for 95% of my treatment time.

As in all matters of life, intention is crucial. What you target is what you impact most. I’m sure you and your client both expect that your main focus will be on their muscles. If that’s where your intention goes, the effects of treatment on other parts of the self will be indirect and less specific. But if you want to provide the client with relaxation, mobility, and lasting outcomes, you should consider the joints more specifically. I’m not talking about the fast adjustment that we chiropractors sometimes do. I’m talking about restoring the tiny gliding movements that occur at every joint. It’s something you can easily incorporate into massage, usually without the client even noticing.

Subtle gliding motions are crucial for maintaining joint health, ensuring proper alignment, and supporting full range of motion. When glide is restricted—often due to injury, prolonged immobilization, or chronic postural stress—joint mechanics become compromised, potentially leading to pain, stiffness, and compensatory movement patterns that increase the risk of further injury elsewhere.

Micro-mobilizations aim to restore this lost glide by introducing movement in specific directions to the joints. These interventions can help reduce pain, improve synovial fluid distribution, and enhance proprioceptive feedback.

For example, in the shoulder, restoring posterior glide can significantly improve internal rotation, which is critical for daily functions like reaching behind the back. The number one way that people injure the shoulder is by reaching into the back seat for something while driving, which involves internal rotation with extension.

In the knee, regaining normal glide is essential for activities like walking and squatting without discomfort. We tend to think of the knee like we think of the elbow: it only bends and straightens, right? But no. When you turn to look behind you, more of the rotation comes from the knee than from the neck, hips or low back (feel free to gasp). Also, without rotational glide, bending the knee can be hard, painful, and/or impossible. There is strain to the meniscus and the cartilage, the kneecap can’t track properly, etc. etc. Wouldn’t you like to work with that more effectively? Remember: all my classes combine micromobilization, massage techniques, and anatomy. It’s in your scope of practice, and I’m willing to bet that most of you will get better results than many chiropractors.

See the video below that will teach you to mobilize the elbow – considered the simplest joint in the body – to help with tennis and golf elbow. Try it, and I’ll bet you’ll agree that gliding a joint will make your job easier and your outcomes better. Let me use the elbow as an example of how important glide is.

The true elbow (the humeruo-ulnar joint) is considered the simplest joint in the body. “All it does” is bend and straighten. But it wouldn’t be able to do that if there weren’t side-to-side space in the joint, without which the humerus would be stuck in the ulna, as in a vise. Tennis and golf elbow usually involve side-to-side restriction of humeral movement in the joint. Restoring glide helps greatly with both these conditions. In the attached video, I’ll show you a very simple gliding mobilization that I can just about guarantee will improve the outcome of your muscle work for these conditions. As always, I hope it helps. Enjoy, and let me know how it goes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM8NWIEX4Vw

 

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

~John Wooden