40 Miles on a Paddleboard With Hypermobility: What My Body Taught Me

What happens when you ask a hypermobile body to paddleboard 40 miles in two days? In this conversation with the Global Podcast Network, I share the story of a pretty ambitious adventure: paddleboarding 40 miles down the Fox River in Illinois—from Yorkville all the way to where the Fox meets the Illinois River. We originally planned to take three or four days. We did it in two. 18 miles the first day. 22 miles the second. And because I live with hypermobility and classical Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (cEDS), this wasn't simply an endurance challenge. It became a real-life lesson in body awareness, fatigue, stability, adaptation, and knowing how to respond when my body started telling me it needed something different. In this conversation, we talk about: • What hypermobility actually means and why muscles may have to work harder to create stability • Why exercise and recovery can look different in a hypermobile body • How I prepared my body to handle a physically demanding adventure • What happened as my core, shoulders, back, and neck began to fatigue • How I changed the way I was paddling as different muscles became tired • Why body mechanics become even more important with fatigue • Blood pooling and some of the challenges I experience with POTS-like symptoms • Slipping ribs and the extra awareness I use when carrying heavy loads • The cycle many hypermobile people experience: pain → being told to strengthen → getting hurt while strengthening → becoming afraid to exercise • Why learning HOW to strengthen safely matters • The role confidence and body awareness played throughout the trip • And what it meant to finish 40 miles and recover remarkably well afterward One of my favorite parts of this conversation comes near the end. During the trip, there were moments when I wondered what my body was going to feel like afterward. My neck hurt. My back hurt. I was exhausted. Two days later, I was back in the gym. Not because hypermobility suddenly disappeared—but because I've spent years learning how to take care of this body, strengthen it, listen to it, and adapt when something isn't working. For me, the goal of working with hypermobility isn't simply avoiding pain or avoiding activity. It's building enough support, awareness, strength, and confidence that we can do MORE of the things we want to do. For me, sometimes that means getting on a paddleboard and seeing where the river takes me. *Support before effort. Stability before flexibility.* Subscribe for more conversations about hypermobility, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, strength, stability, nervous-system regulation, body awareness, chronic pain, and learning to work WITH your body. #Hypermobility #EhlersDanlosSyndrome #EDS #Paddleboarding #JointHypermobility #ChronicPain #StrengthTraining #BodyAwareness #HyperStrong