Are you constantly rolling your tight ITB, rubbing that tension in your neck or trying to stretch those tight hamstrings?
Do you find that no matter what you do, that tightness never goes away?
People stretch with the intention of trying to lengthen their muscles but, muscles that feel tight are not actually short.
The feeling of muscular tension is due to muscle ‘tone’ – the nerve signal intensity in the muscle at any time. (Think volume of music controlled by a dial) Sometimes, (particularly those pesky upper traps) muscles feel tense as they are taut, stretched over too much distance – not short!
Static stretching (hold and count to something) has been all but eliminated from sports and other human performance warm up routines. Static stretching is not useful for preparing for activity and stretching does not make muscles permanently longer. It feels good – yes – and it’s fine to stretch for that reason, but just don’t expect it to be the solution to your constantly tight muscles.
Those tense muscles are probably fatigued. Muscles get fatigued because they do too much work for their current capacity of either strength or endurance. It’s why you can feel less tense in your neck after a decent sleep – the muscles aren’t longer, they have just recovered from the previous day’s overload. If they continually get tense again day after day, then the solution is not to stretch – or rub, needle, roll, trigger point or massage gun them – but to strengthen.
“You can’t stretch away weakness (or rub, needle, cup, hotpack, magnesium spray or foam roll..)”
While stretching can provide some temporary relief, the likely solution to those constantly tight muscles is to strengthen them.
So the answer is? – strengthen!
If consistently tight muscles are likely fatigued, then you need to reduce fatigue. To reduce fatigue, you have to increase the capacity of the muscles to tolerate the daily loads placed on them. The demands will be different for someone performing athletically to someone sitting at a desk, but the principal is the same – get stronger!
For tight upper traps – try some shrugs!
For tight hamstrings – try some long leg bridging
If you suffer from constantly tight muscles and neck, back, hip or shoulder pain, then book a consultation and assessment today to analysis your posture, strength and movement patterns and find a solution.