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What Your Tight Muscles Say About You
On overcoming the illusion of inflexibility.
All around the world people are stretching tight muscles in a desperate attempt to feel less pain and tension. Some do it because it’s what they’ve been taught. Others do it because it feels like the right thing to do. Wherever you stand, there’s one very important fact you must know about the miraculous, mysterious organism you occupy called the human body…
A tight muscle isn’t a shortened muscle. It’s a weak one.
I’ll say it again. Unless there is a very rare pathology present, tension and irritation at a muscle is very rarely due to a shortened state, but rather caused by weakness and inactivity. Tightness doesn’t exist within a muscle fiber itself meaning this is all much less of a mechanical issue and more of a sensory one. Components of the nervous system and accessory tissues may make you feel ‘inflexible’, but they aren’t tight in the way you’re likely picturing in your head.
This is a common feeling of tightness individuals get when a muscle is neurologically inhibited and doesn’t have as much control or strength as it would like. — Dr. Grant Elliot
With this knowledge alone, we can immediately begin to reroute the treatment strategy and wave goodbye to…
