[malfist]

I've been going through PT for a hypermobility disorder related injury and I've use an AI to help me figure out "interview questions" to see if a PT knows anything about hypermobility or is willing to learn. I found it helpful to select a new PT after my first PT I trusted made things worse by prescribing stretches and no load progression from rest and recovery back to deadlifts

[kerabatsos]

People put a lot of faith in human “guardrails”, standards, etc. But the same argument could be made that trusting human experts without discernment is as dangerous as trusting AI or Google or whatever other non-human source. It’s always been the case.

[malfist]

On the plus side, it's not like it was blind faith. Human judgement lead me to seek out another expert when I didn't like with the current PT was suggesting I do (no practicing hip hinge movements before moving to deadlift, advising against valsava for heavy lifts, ignoring feedback that a movement was causing pain, prescribing stretches to increase flexibility in a hypermobile person).

The LLM also gave me a bunch of questions to ask a new PT but I didn't have the understanding to judge the responses so I did more research. One of the things the LLM wanted me to ask about was questions about form and force closure and ideally would get a response about the oblique sling across the back. My PT didn't give me that exact response, but explained it in much more lay person terms, but because I had done my research I was able to validate their response was directionally correct. And so far, my experience with this PT has been much better. We're doing block pulls at 70% of my prior deadlift weight, next week we're going to go way back on weight and lower it some to get closer to proper deadlifting and work in some asymmetric loading exercises.

[wwweston]

FYI - if there's any reason to believe your particular hypermobility issues might be rooted in any kind of named or unnamed connective tissue disorder, be sure to familiarize yourself with the potential vascular hazards of heavy lifts in general and Valsalva breath-holding specifically. Hypermobility can be a sign that you've drawn a genetic lot which means that you don't even have to lift all that heavy to create aneurysms.

And in keeping with our theme of the limits of both LLMs and humans, unfortunately many exercise and medical professionals may not focus on how some specific genetic lots work until a catastrophic problem presents itself.

> ignoring feedback that a movement was causing pain, prescribing stretches to increase flexibility in a hypermobile person

So glad you found better advice than this!

LLMs are fantastic tools for exploring a topic, coming up with good questions and lines of understanding to pursue with professionals, and in picking professionals. I think they're also poor outright replacements for people especially when it comes to deep and important domains, but still quite useful.

[draftsman]

May I ask, is the hypermobility disorder you refer to EDS? If so, what was the injury?

[malfist]

My doc didn't do the full set of test/exam for an hEDS diagnosis, so technically it's just generalized hypermobility spectrum disorder based on past medical history and a near "perfect" beighton score. It could be hEDS though, as a lay person reading the diagnostic criteria I either fit it, or are borderline.

Injury was to my SI joint, I've historically always irritated it lifting, but I set a new PR for deadlifts and it was debilitating for 3 weeks before my other half made me stop being stubborn and see a doctor about it.

I've also had my left shoulder joint surgically repaired after multiple dislocations.