Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

“I’m Not Flexible Anymore” (But You Might Have Been)

16 Feb 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:38

In this monologue, Dr. Aaron Hartman explains that many adults who consider themselves stiff or inflexible were actually hypermobile as children. He describes how, over the decades, the body’s connective tissues become scarred and hardened to provide stability, leading to a loss of range of motion. This transition makes people more susceptible to musculoskeletal problems such as back pain, slipped discs, and nerve impingement. Because flexibility typically declines after the 30s, many adults fail to recognize their earlier hypermobility, which can obscure the underlying cause of their injuries.

Chapters

Now, many people will tell me, oh, I'm not hypermobile. I'm actually tight. I'm stiff, my back hurts, I can't touch my toes. And I'm like, well, how are you when you're 10? Oh, I could put my fans on the ground, and I could. You know, you start listening to the story when you're younger, you were really hypermobile. As you've gotten older, your body is almost not really scarred down, but kind of hardened to hold things in place, making you less flexible, more prone to injuries like back issues, slipped discs and hinged nerves and things like that. And so what happens is, because people in their usually from their 30s on aren't as flexible, they don't realize that you were actually hypermobile when you're younger.