I always hear how shit everyone's joints are. I can relate sometimes, but I've mostly psyched myself out and have only had joint problems since I begun fearing old age and regretting my life in old age (due to my young and rash way of using my body). I've begun reversing that, but a serious look at strengthening the joints is necessary to de-neutre our joint balls and go be badass again. "oooh my joints" is something I wish were extinct.
Related: Planning in depth and detail a 30 year plan for my life that involved a large amount of physical, emotional and mental strength, endurance, durability, flexibility and agility (in the plan) had me tensing my whole body and increasing joint tightness/contraction (vs loose pussy joints), and increasing all of my attributes in preparation (as were relevant that is). Just by planning it out and taking it sincerely my body started preparing. I think our short sightedness is what makes us crumble. Having a long hard road ahead is necessary, not an option. When we give up, we go limp. Ever notice that? That limpness is deadly to our joints. We're signaling our body to stop moving… so the mobilizing joints stop trying.
So for the mind side of it, have a long road of decision making, master planning, leadership, building up and overcoming ahead of you. All that movement ahead of you preps the body ahead of time. Expecting combat is a good idea too.
On the body side, I would squat into a slav chair and tense my joints (including SI Joint) while stretching out slightly for wiggle room by increasing internal pressure and expanding, NOT by relaxing. I stayed firm and tense and felt like and I could see yellow fire erupting from my body in the periphery of my vision (mind's eye I guess, I was doing some visualization for the planning). It was all about building internal pressure, power, energy and fortitude (durability). "oooh relaaax you'll wear yourself out" <- never listen to an old, weak, or slow person about how to live EVER. "ooh tendinitis" <- Your joints are loose; you don't active-stretch so you don't know how to engage your muscles near the end of your range of movement – try doing a front back split and holding yourself up by your legs while keeping your legs and body straight, and you'll realize quickly that you can fuck your joints up if you don't focus and do it properly.
Gymnasts have the strongest joints out there. They perform straight arm movements for endurance and strength, for christ' sake. From their joint's perspective, they're 'living on the edge', the edge of glory. You don't learn how to fight destructive forces from the safety of your home, do you? So you have to properly train your body in THE DANGER ZONE. For the lower body, holding up splits is good, and glute ham raises or holds and quad raises or holds (progressively).
As well, it's about balancing the load on opposite sides of the limb. If you do push ups, you want to engage the biceps and shoulders, rather than focusing on the triceps. If you focus on the triceps, you want to engage the lats, rear delts, teres major, traps, and core more. People who don't do very high reps will often have the focus and intensity but not the experience necessary to balance these things out. When you perform very high reps, your body identifies imbalances in the first hundreds of reps, and then fixes them in the next hundreds. The stronger you are, perhaps the shorter this period is, I don't know. The body should act all together, not separately. Isolating things all the time (already a habit of the mind, which bleeds into bodily behavior) will fuck up your joints, unless you already have very strong joints that you workout more full-body or limb otherwise.
When running, don't run where your flesh flops up and down like you're some heavy fat giant jiggling across the plains. You want to be 'tiny' and compact. No flesh should be jiggling or going up and down. Only your hair (shave your head). You should look the same moving as when stationary, in other words. Otherwise, you're just falling onto your joints heavy and clumsy like a baffoon trying to explode their knees as quickly as possible. Even if you're 200 lbs, run as light and controlled as possible. Anything else is lazy and dangerous. You basically want fixed joints, supple strong muscle; though the stronger and more fixed the joints, perhaps the harder and denser the muscles will be.
Thoughts on joint strengthening?