The Active Bridge: Why Your Loose Joints Need Strength, Not More Stretching

7 min read • Last updated: March 25, 2026 • By Dr. Garrett Hewstan, DC

Most people who come to me with chronic low back pain assume they're tight. They stretch. They foam roll. They do yoga. And the pain keeps coming back, because the problem was never tightness. The problem is that their joints are too loose, and the muscles around those joints aren't strong enough to hold them in place.

When you can move easily but your joints are crunching and compressing, that's not flexibility. That's instability. And instability is what's actually keeping you in pain.

The active bridge is one of the absolute best things you can do for yourself. I've been doing this work for 25 years and I have never seen change like these bridges bring—for myself and for my clients. It's the exercise that builds real strength in your spine and pulls your joints back into the musculature where they belong.

The Real Problem: Your Active System Isn't Doing Its Job

There are really two physical systems in the body. There's the active system—muscles and tendons—and there's the passive system—bones, discs, and ligaments. Think of a skeleton hanging in the front of an anatomy class. It's passive. It needs the active system to move it.

When these two systems are in balance, your muscles basically hang on your bones in a way that feels effortless. But when they're out of balance—and for most of us they are, because we spend all day flexed over in a chair—the passive system ends up working too hard. That's where disc herniations come from. That's where the electrical nerve pain comes from. The bones are doing the work that the muscles should be doing.

If you tend to be hypermobile—if your joints move easily but without control—this imbalance is even worse. You're crunching and cranking on the joints rather than using the muscles around them to pull those joints back into the musculature. That's exactly what the active bridge addresses.

What the Active Bridge Actually Does

The active bridge is the complete opposite of sitting in a chair. When you sit, everything rolls forward and collapses—your shoulders, your spine, your hips all go into flexion. The active bridge reverses all of that. It pushes your pelvis, your hips, and your low back into a neutral position. It's a full-body balance.

But here's what makes it different from a standard gym bridge: it's not about brute force. It's not about holding a position as long as you can. The way we teach it, you're building strength and awareness at the same time. You're learning to feel where your body is in space—something most people with loose joints have lost.

There are details that matter enormously here. The way you create a muscular platform with your shoulder blades so your spine isn't bearing the load. The angle and quality of the movement. Whether you're working at the top of your range or the bottom. These details are the difference between building real stability and just stressing your low back further. They're the reason this exercise needs to be taught in person, not followed from a description on a screen.

Why Loose Bodies and Tight Bodies Need Opposite Things

This is the part I really need people to understand, because getting it wrong can make things worse.

If you're someone whose joints move easily—you're flexible, maybe even hypermobile—doing a passive, restorative bridge creates more passivity in your body. You don't need more range of motion. You need the strength to control the range you already have. The active bridge is going to be everything for you, even if it's tough at first.

On the other hand, if you're very tight and restricted, the active bridge might not be the right starting point. You may need to restore some mobility first before you can build strength on top of it.

Most people end up doing a combination of both, but the ratio matters. Maybe it's 70/30 active to passive, or the reverse. That depends entirely on your body, and it's something we figure out together in your first session. Getting this wrong is one of the most common reasons people struggle with bridges on their own.

What Clients Actually Feel

The first thing most people notice is that muscles are waking up that haven't worked in a long time. There's a good soreness to it—the kind that tells you something productive is happening. Some people feel clicking and shifting as their body starts letting go of old holding patterns. That's normal.

What surprises people is how quickly things change. Within the first session, you feel your spine extending and strengthening in a way that's completely different from anything else you've tried. You feel empowered in your body. That's not a marketing word—clients say it unprompted. There's something about finally feeling your own muscles holding your joints in place that changes how you experience being in your body.

Over the first few weeks, the joint compression and crunching starts to decrease. Your body awareness increases dramatically. You start to develop what I call an intuition, a connection, a rapport and trust with your body. You know when your body wants more, and you know when it's done. That relationship is honestly the most valuable thing you build.

And the bridge keeps on giving as your body evolves. Every single time you do it, something is a little different, because your body is a little different. There are progressions that add challenge as you get stronger. It never stops being useful.

Why This Has to Be Learned in Person

I could describe the setup. I could tell you where to put your feet and what to do with your elbows. But the active bridge has details that you can't self-correct from a written description, and getting them wrong doesn't just make the exercise less effective—it can make your back worse.

The biggest one: almost everyone rests on their spine instead of creating the muscular platform with their shoulder blades. They don't realize they're doing it. It feels right to them, but the protective effect is completely gone. I have to watch you do it to see whether you're actually in the right position.

The quality of movement matters too. Most people go too fast, and it becomes mindless. I always tell clients: don't go for the movement, go for the feeling in the body. Slower is better. You could build strength with a faster movement, but you won't bring about the calm awareness we're trying to cultivate. That distinction between efforting through a movement and actually feeling your body shift—that's something you learn with coaching, not from an article.

And then there's the question of which bridge variation is right for you, how much active versus passive, and how to progress as you get stronger. I see people in the most distress in their low back and SI joints, and for them especially, we have to get the combination right. It's critical.