Go From “I’m So Stiff!” to “Could I Actually Be Hypermobile?”
08/08/2025
As your voice teacher, I wear many hats. I’m your biggest cheerleader and often, I find myself playing detective. In both private and group lessons, I sometimes hear or see something in your voice or body that makes me pause and think: “Could this be a sign of hypermobility?”.
But when I bring it up, your response is: “No way. I’m not flexible at all.”. And just like that, the conversation ends. You might even feel resistant or triggered by the mere mention of the word “hypermobility”. Which, I get, can be a loaded term. But in a voice lesson, that resistance can become a wall that limits your vocal development. So, I drop the subject.
Here’s the truth: I often keep teaching with the possibility of hypermobility quietly running in the background, because it helps me offer you the safest, most effective support for your voice. But to be honest: it’s frustrating for me. Skirting around a topic that could make a big difference for you isn’t ideal. I want our work to be clear, empowering, and grounded in open communication.
So this blog post is my way of gently reopening that door.
If you’ve confidently said, “I couldn’t possibly be hypermobile” , I invite you to read on. Not to prove you wrong, but to offer you new insight, so we can have deeper, more honest conversations in your lessons. And, yes, my not-so-secret motive is to stop tiptoeing around this topic 😉
This article builds on my previous post, Hypermobile Singers: From Pretty Impressive to Pretty Painful, and dives deeper into a key distinction: hypermobility and flexibility are not the same. Because the truth is, you can absolutely be hypermobile and extremely inflexible at the same time.
- Check the agenda for my Online Solo Group Lessons for Hypermobile Singers – You can enroll as an Active Participant or learn from observing the lessons as a Fly-On-the-Wall.
- Subscribe to The singsing! Sofa Library to…
- watch the 2-hour long webinar Teaching Hypermobile Singers: Go from Pretty Frustrating to Pretty Fascinating and learn how to effectively teach hypermobile singers
- watch the 2 webinars led by Christine Schneider, who offers invaluable insights on hypermobility: Core Training for Singers – The Vocal Resilience Cylinder & Core Workout for Singers.
- Of course, you are also very welcome to book Private Voice Lessons & Vocal Coaching and / or Mentoring with me 🙂
The Difference Between Hypermobility and Flexibility
It’s important to understand that these terms refer to two different things.
Hypermobility means that your joints can move beyond the normal range because the connective tissues are unusually loose or lax. The correct term for this looseness in the joints is “laxity”. It’s not about how stretchy you feel, it’s about structural slack in the tissues that stabilize your joints.
Flexibility, on the other hand, refers to how stretchy or pliable your muscles and tendons are. It reflects muscular length and elasticity, not joint mobility.
So you can have joint hypermobility (laxity) but at the same time have tight muscles that severely limit your overall range of motion.
In this article, I’ll explore two major reasons:
- Compensatory muscle tension: your body creates protective stiffness to stabilize loose joints.
- Age-related changes in connective tissue: your flexibility may decrease over time.
This distinction is especially important for singers, dancers, movers, basically anyone working with the body in fine detail. Because a misread of your body’s signals can lead to ineffective training or even injury. By understanding the true nature of your movement patterns, you can develop healthier, more efficient vocal technique.
Reason 1: Compensatory Muscle Tension
If you’ve taken voice lessons with me, you may have heard me say “It’s not that you’re just inflexible, you’re compensating.”. Your muscles and tendons may be chronically tense in order to stabilize hypermobile joints.
This protective tension masks the underlying joint laxity and can severely limit your overall movement. Think of it like this: your body senses instability and responds by tightening everything up. It’s your system’s way of saying, “Let’s lock this down before it gets dangerous.”. The result? You feel stiff, not because your joints are inflexible, but because your muscles are doing overtime.
And yes, science backs this up. In a 2021 study of over 200 individuals aged 2 to 70 with a Beighton Score of 5 or higher (a clinical indicator of joint hypermobility), 87.5% were unable to perform the forward trunk-flexion test, not because their joints weren’t lax, but due to muscle retraction and compensatory stiffness.
That means the very test designed to catch hypermobility may fail precisely because your body is compensating with tension, not because you’re not hypermobile!
Reason 2: Age‑Related Changes
Let’s be honest: aging brings real changes to your muscles, tendons, fascia, and cartilage. And these changes often lead to a slow, progressive stiffening that can deeply affect how you move, breathe, and sing.
That’s why the Beighton Score is adjusted for age, requiring fewer points for a positive result in people over 50.
Beyond compensatory muscle tension, muscle stiffness tends to increase naturally with age, particularly within the intramuscular connective tissues. That means your muscles resist stretching even more than they used to, regardless of how mobile your joints may be underneath.
In addition, your tendons and cartilage also go through molecular changes: The laxity of your joints decreases naturally with age.
That’s why, when older singers tell me, “There’s no way I could be hypermobile, I’m way too stiff!”, I gently ask about their childhood or teen years. Did they do backbends in ballet? Gymnastics? Party tricks with their thumbs or elbows? Often, a moment of recognition follows.
One of my 60+ clients once shared:
“Indeed, as a child, I was very athletic and good at many sports, including gymnastics… and I think I was very flexible and agile. It’s only more recently that I experience more stiffness and lack of flexibility.”
That kind of story is common. Many hypermobile adults have forgotten how flexible they once were, or never realized that their youthful agility was something worth paying attention to.
So if you’re stiff today, that doesn’t rule out hypermobility. It just means your body has adapted with time, layering strength, stiffness, and compensation over what may still be underlying joint laxity.
Why It Matters for Singers (Beginner or Pro)
Voice technique isn’t just breathing; it’s a full-body experience. Hypermobility and compensatory tension can make posture, breath management, and laryngeal control feel very challenging.
Understanding that your stiff muscles may be due to your lax joints gives you a new way to “unlock”. Strengthening stabilising muscles and dynamic stretching are essential to support hypermobile joints! With the right balance of strength, awareness and technique, you can reclaim ease in your movements ànd your voice.
- Check the agenda for my Online Solo Group Lessons for Hypermobile Singers – You can enroll as an Active Participant or learn from observing the lessons as a Fly-On-the-Wall.
- Subscribe to The singsing! Sofa Library to…
- watch the 2-hour long webinar Teaching Hypermobile Singers: Go from Pretty Frustrating to Pretty Fascinating and learn how to effectively teach hypermobile singers
- watch the 2 webinars led by Christine Schneider, who offers invaluable insights on hypermobility: Core Training for Singers – The Vocal Resilience Cylinder & Core Workout for Singers.
- Of course, you are also very welcome to book Private Voice Lessons & Vocal Coaching and / or Mentoring with me 🙂
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RESOURCES
- The Beighton Score as a measure of generalised joint hypermobility – Sabeeha Malek et al (2021)
- Regulatory Mechanisms and Clinical Manifestations of Musculoskeletal Aging – Caleb Grote et al (2022)
- The impact of age-related increase in passive muscle stiffness on simulated upper limb reaching – Tiina Murtola & Christopher Richards (2023)
- Pain management in the Ehlers–Danlos syndromes – Pradeep Chopra et al (2017)
As always, feel free to send me your thoughts, questions, and feedback in the comments below this blog, via the contact form or in the singsing! online community 
Cordially,
Sarah