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Lecture Notes

Over the next few slides we'll talk about three main factors that affect the flexibility of our joints. The first of these is joint structure, or the way that the joint is built and designed, and that structure really determines the direction of movement, and also partially determines the range of movement. So, for example, you see two different joints listed here. The first is a hinge joint, and the hinge joint only allows movement in one plane. So examples of this are your knee and your elbow. When you compare this to the ball-and-socket joint, the ball-and-socket joint has rotation in almost all joint angles. So examples of this are hip and our shoulder, and if you imagine all the different movements that your hip and shoulder can make compared to the movements that your elbow and your knee could make, there's obviously a much wider range of motion in the hip and shoulder. And all of these factors in the type of joint affects the flexibility and the range of motion that you'll have at each joint, and this is part of the reason that we talk about flexibility being very joint-specific.