How to Alleviate Tight Muscles

My understanding of tight muscles, is coming from a background as a trained Kinesiologist, NST Practitioner, (Neuro-Structural Integration Technique) Personal Trainer & Reconnective Healing Practitioner.

The tonicity of a muscle changes, as demands are placed upon it, and depending upon the use, or lack of use of specific muscles, they may become hypertonic (tight) or hypotonic (slack) and react against each other.

How many kinds of muscles are there?

Only Three:

• Striated (striped) muscles that move the bones.
• Smooth, involuntary muscles that line the blood vessels, stomach, digestive tract and other internal organs.
• Muscles of the heart, which are a cross between smooth and striped.

Inside the Muscle

Slice through a muscle, and it will resemble a telephone cable. Inside is a bundle of lesser cables, with each bundle enclosing still smaller ones. The first and largest bundle is made up of muscle fibres in which there are nerves, blood vessels and connective tissue. Each fibre is built from smaller strands called ‘myofibrils’, and each myofibril contains intertwined filaments of proteins called ‘myosin’ and ‘actin’. With age, the striped muscles that move your bones, are slowly replaced by connective tissues, in a process called ‘fibrosis’, still tough, but not elastic, resulting in reduced strength and slower muscular response.

How Muscles Work.

Muscles work through a process involving chemical reactions and an exchange of nerve signals. Eg. Dangle your arm, and your bicep muscle is long, thin and stringy. Clench your fist and flex your forearm, and the biceps become tense and bulge.

Why Are Muscles Tight?

Did you know that tight hamstrings often indicate weak lower-abdominal, and also, weak lower-back muscles. You see, all three of these muscle groups attach to the pelvis. Lower-abdominal and low-back muscles tend to tilt the pelvis forward, whereas the hamstrings tend to tilt the pelvis backward. If either the lower-abdominal muscles or the low-back muscles are weak, these muscles can’t counterbalance the pull of the hamstrings, which will shorten and tighten as they tilt the pelvis backward.

Muscles become tight to compensate for weakness or instability elsewhere in the body.

Many times a massage therapist will discover a tight muscle and start kneading, prodding, poking and thumping, in an attempt to loosen it up. Guess What? Not going to work.

The reason the muscle is tight is because it is more than likely overcompensating for an opposing loose muscle.

Imagine a swinging door scenario – it has two springs, one on either side. Both springs need to be of the same strength and length. If one of the springs is loose, and therefore lengthened, the other will tighten up and shorten, to take up the slack. No amount of stretching the tight spring will fix the problem until the loose spring is either tightened or replaced, as both need to be in balance, same with the muscles in our body.

Strengthening the opposing ‘weak’ (hypotonic) muscle is the only way to relax the ‘overtight’ (hypertonic) muscle, so, stop prodding and kneading the tight muscle because it will only tighten more. It may feel better for a very short time, after having been worked on, but only because it has been beaten into submission, and the sensors have been dulled. With someone who has a strain or spasm in the muscles, or a sports person, more specific proprioceptive stimulation of the spindle cells and golgi organ tendon may be needed.

People are under the misconception that stretching is the be all and end all. Don’t get me wrong, stretching is good, although, only if all your muscles are in balance. Many people have loose or under toned muscles, and for them stretching may not be the answer, they need to tone the muscles first. Stretching an already over stretched muscle will tighten the opposing muscle ever more.

In Applied Kinesiology, the Origin and Insertion Method of correcting a muscle imbalance is used. The origin is the broad end of the muscle attached to the non-moving bone, while the insertion is the narrow end of the muscle attached to the moving bone. This method will wake up a muscle or stimulate the end fibres to connect the muscle relay switch back to the brain.

Another method is Reconnective Healing, where all the cells in the body vibrate at such a high frequency that everything readjusts, relaxes and settles into where it is all meant to be. How many sessions, you may ask, as many as your body needs to settle into equilibrium.