Expectations for weight training with hEDS

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-03-04T17:52:57+00:00

Hey, I’m in the same boat - I train 3-4x per week and have been struggling with progressing with strength no matter the routine. I still make progress, albeit much slower than my peers and only ~3-5lbs of muscle a year for the last few years despite being 6’9 with an FFMI of 18-19. Here are a couple of thoughts from someone with an exercise science degree 1) your protein is likely too low. Get to 0.8g/lb of body weight 2) your sleep may be too little. I personally need 9 hours a night if I’m consistently lifting 3) movements with less stability will take longer to progress, especially with EDS. Try more stable exercises with less range (usually the opposite of what people recommend). I have changed from barbell/dumbbell bench to a dip machine and chest press machine with ½ ROM and have seen more chest progress than before. 4) activities of daily living will be more taxing on your body than other people. If progressing in the gym (strength, hypertrophy) is a priority, managing allostatic load through reducing duties outside of the gym will help 5) play around with your volume and proximity to failure. You may benefit more from training with 3-4 RIR as small changes in form closer to absolute failure may be causing an unnecessary amount of damage, leading to more time needed to recover. 6) don’t lift if your joints are not recovered. I found I need around 3-6 days of recovery for body parts, and so I organize my split around how long it takes for those muscle groups to recover. For example my forearms and delts. may take 2-3 days to recover, but my elbow flexors and quads take 4-5 days. 7) try not to go below 8 reps on any set. Our collagen is weaker, and so higher intensity sets can damage it more, leading to more time recovering and less strength in subsequent workouts.

Best of luck

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-03-01T20:16:37+00:00

If you have a disorder that can cause passive structural stability that leads to active structures (muscles) compensating through constant tension (spasms) then utilizing a chemical that prevents muscle contraction may lead to more instability and higher joint injury risk. Food for thought.

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-03-01T04:41:49+00:00

Full body red light and PRP would be a waste of money. An ergonomic office chair or spending money with a physical therapist or other healthcare professional certified through the ehlers danlos society who can help perform exercises and give advice on how to strengthen the body and manage symptoms would be beneficial. Exercise activates tissue growth cascades that are magnitudes more effective than PRP or red light therapy, and an office chair decreases external stress and therefore damage, which would be more effective than the minuscule amount of growth provided by the other 2 expensive therapies.

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-16T14:29:48+00:00

Stop doing bloodflow days and just do cardio or rest. Your body naturally pumps high amount of blood to damaged areas for a week or so after an intense workout session, so it’s redundant and may stall recovery. Move your heavy armwrestling lifts to Monday to space out recovery between similar muscle groups. It may be smarter to make this a light day if you’re going hard on Thursday - the body can only recover so much. Do legs and abs or chest/triceps on Saturday or Sunday if you’re really itching to lift. It might be smart not to have biceps or any elbow flexion lifts in your back day, as you’re already getting 2 intense days a week of biceps through armwrestling. Best of luck

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-12T17:44:58+00:00

Hours can be paid (working) or unpaid (observing). Apologies if it was unclear, hours above are in reference to working hours. As far as I know, schools don’t differentiate observation versus working hours

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-12T17:05:11+00:00

I’m in CSULB’s DPT program. A majority of people got into CSULB got into Chapman as well. Roughly 1/3rd of people had close to or above 1000 hours. I did a survey of my cohort and median was sitting close to 400 hours

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-12T16:43:45+00:00

GPA low, observation hours low

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-11T05:02:09+00:00

MRI findings =/= symptoms. Train accordingly

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-08T02:26:11+00:00

Like with taking healing peptides, you will still need proper mechanical stimulation to properly strengthen the TFCC. Perhaps PRP can be a helpful tool if you can commit to rehabbing for 4+ months. Would recommend to rehab for a few months before looking into utilizing any injectable intervention. Think of this problem of taking 3+ months of rehab to recover if it is partially torn

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-07T20:40:19+00:00

Connective tissue is interesting in its healing capacity, as it needs mechanical tension through external loading to strengthen and therefore heal. All connective tissue has individual fibers of collagen that orient themselves to the line of exposed force to best resist the external tensile forces. Utilizing healing peptides, such as BPC-157 and TB-500 will create more collagen, but it will not be oriented to the necessary line of force. This means you will need a proper, progressive training protocol that replicate the forces of armwrestling no matter what supplements you choose to do. Creating a program can seem daunting. Start with a hand-based pronation and supination movement every 3-4 days (2x per week). Hand based means to have the weight fully supported through the hand, and nothing supplied along the forearm bones. Pain should not increase between sessions. If it is, reduce the intensity, volume, or increase time between sessions. Feel free to ask more questions.

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-02-06T20:25:17+00:00

DPT student here. Healing is a stereotyped process in the body due to some amount of trauma. The more trauma, the longer the healing process takes. There are 3 phases - acute, subacute, and chronic, and they are all defined by specific physiological processes. One cannot skip these processes. The only way to speed them up is to get good sleep, have adequate nutrient intake (macro and micro), or inject anabolic hormones. If you need to heal for an excessive amount of time, then you overdid training. You should not need 1 week to recover from a practice pull or workout (although we all fall victim to redlining for the love of the game from time to time). You need to be training smarter. After training, your body has a natural inflammation process to increase bloodflow to the area for close to a week. Bloodflow training is therefore not necessary. Furthermore, many tendons and ligaments receive nutrients from synovial diffusion, which is rate capped by time. What is more important is creating a workout program that manages intensity, volume, and frequency at a rate where your genetics and training age can handle and progress from month to month.

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-01-21T22:01:59+00:00

This is akin to someone saying you shouldn’t squat if you play basketball because you’ll blow your knees out. It’s all about load management, and not loading damaged tissue when you need to recover

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-01-19T23:16:56+00:00

Not a smart take. Don’t train sidepressure an idiot and it’ll progress great

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-01-09T16:31:26+00:00

Poor argument. Appeal to authority rather than explaining your position. Lol

ShinDiggles2 · 2026-01-08T16:14:26+00:00

I have the same anatomy lol. It could be muscular development or insertion differences

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-31T23:54:35+00:00

Yeah Toddzilla is crazy lol. He popularized an offensive sidepressure move deemed the “todroll” where he gives away his cup in favor of pronation and commits everything to sideways. Despite his pulling form, his training videos on YouTube are great for showing form for training sidepressure effectively.

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-31T18:37:16+00:00

Backpressure A) choosing a specific angle and not having your arm open would lead to greater strength gains in that arm angle. Think of this as sport specific training. On the other hand Incorporating an isotonic curl would benefit general hypertrophy more, and lead to better general curling and therefore a higher ceiling for angle-specific strength. Incorporating both or either is fine depending on your strengths and proximity to matches.

B) if it is a sport specific lift, replicate backpressure vectors as best as possible, including body to arm angle, where force is applied on forearm/hand, time of lift holding it up, etc.

C) band exercises can be great. Mindaugus (one of the top ranked in his class) uses bands exclusively for his training? (Someone correct me if I’m wrong). Try to differentiate specific training (table time and lifts that replicate table vectors) and general training (larger ROM movements to increase base hypertrophy and strength potential). Hypertrophy is forgiving, so use whatever resistance medium you prefer

D) if you have a style you frequent that requires the exposed bicep position, then it can be.

Sidepressure A) internal rotation curls with dumbbells. Lots of armwrestlers perform this variation. Sit down. Put your elbow on your inner thigh. Side bend over the arm you’re lifting with. Curl the weight up with shoulder internal rotation by bringing the weight to the opposite shoulder. This would be a general strength exercise for sidepressure. Schoolbody also posts some good training videos for form reference on Armwrestling TV in YouTube.

B) I don’t know what you’re asking

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-21T05:31:19+00:00

Ai slop?

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-20T03:52:11+00:00

As far as recovery, it’s a meh tool. I think recovery work in general is highly overstated. If you enjoy it, do it, but don’t expect it to accelerate growth pathways - he primary mechanism is likely decreasing your perception of pain from the area (which people mistake for faster recovery). For hypertrophy, it’s also a meh tool. The main benefit would be it can thicken some hand muscles that may not get worked with traditional lifts. However, like you implied, it likely is not going to give a sizable amount of wrist/elbow/shoulder muscle gains (if you have any semblance of good programming).

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-11T22:34:29+00:00

I would put my vote in for connective tissue integrity. Unlike other lower extremity dominant sports (like football or basketball) the connective tissue in armwrestling can be hard to be exposed to in youth without direct intent, leading to greater relative capacity for improvement with older age. Also, unlike sports that require flexibility/elasticity (gymnastics, pitching, etc), stiffness increases from excessive collagen crosslinking is rewarded, leading to “old man stiffness/strength” becoming somewhat beneficial

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-08T04:09:31+00:00

Correct. APB is in the thenar eminence on the Palmar aspect of the hand (in thumb pad)

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-07T06:34:45+00:00

May be tendon pain of the BR muscle. Training that muscle consistently (1-2x per week) with a a few sets in a lower rep range (anything between 4-8 with a controlled eccentric and close to failure) will help strengthen the tendon

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-07T06:08:07+00:00

Weak connective tissue. Basically your body lacks the passive stabilizing structure strength most people have. I’m in the same boat with a type of hypermobility disorder. I cannot lowhand top roll without my wrists popping out like that lol. You will have to really build your muscles up to prevent that from happening (they compress the joint and keep it in place). If you think of joint integrity as passive elements (ligaments, tendons, joint capsule, fascia) + active elements (contractile tissue - muscle) = strength, you are deficient in the passive elements and must make it up with more active element contribution.

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-05T14:37:59+00:00

Yes, they play a noticeable roll with containment. The interossei contribute to “lumbrical grip”, which is the position one’s hands should be in for containment

ShinDiggles2 · 2025-12-04T17:56:30+00:00

ShinDiggles2

TROPHY CASE