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Muscle Tightness: Overactive Fatigue vs. Dysfunctional Stiffness – Part 2

Here is part 2 of Dean Sommerset’s blog post for you.

If you missed what he talked about in part 1, CLICK HERE.

As the wheel loses that stability, it becomes “out of true” and winds up warping and not working too well.

What Happens First when Your Back Hurts

So if my hamstrings were tight to make up for my low back, stretching them without stabilizing my back would actually make the problem worse. Normally, when something happens to make my back start to hurt, the first thing that happens is that my glutes and hamstrings tighten up almost immediately. The first thing I do is start to do some light core activation work and spinal stabilization work, and magically my hamstrings feel better!!

What to do if the Muscle is Stiff Due to Disuse?

If the muscles are stiff from disuse, This could be considered a pathological condition as the muscle has undergone degenerative changes to its’ structure, as well as to the fascial envelope around each fibre. The best thing is not simply static stretching to gain length, but a series of active stretches to engage that muscle and the ones around it. This helps to reset the neuromechanical transmitters to lower the tone of the muscle and allow it to re-gain its’ strength and ability to contract and relax properly. This is the type of tight muscle that should be stretched.

Knee Jerk Reaction to Stretching

Trainers have habitually had a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to tight muscles in that they want to stretch the heck out of them for the simple fact that they are tight, and then find the weak muscles and overload them as much as possible to make them stronger. In many cases those tight muscles are tight for a reason, and that reason needs to be looked at, otherwise the training program might cause the person to get into more pain that helping them get through pain.

Strengthening some muscles will only be attainable and beneficial so that the muscle can contract through a full range of motion that can effectively retain tension throughout that length. We see this a lot with muscle spindle activation during maximal lifting with poorly trained muscles, as the weight causes the muscle spindle to deactivate the muscle and produce a muscle that can not sustain contraction against the resistance throughout the range of motion, effectively limiting the strength of the muscle during activity (can’t contract to lift the weight = failed lift = loser who’s not strong). Additionally, you can never look cool stretching, except in some cases.

Why Stretch the Tight and Strengthen the Weak is Not Enough

So looking into why that muscle is tight would help save a lot of time, effort and problems down the road, and may help make training programs better suited to the clients goals, not just the simple “stretch the tight, strengthen the weak” approach to muscle imbalances. It’s always fun working on someones’ upper back and having them realize that they can now touch their toes for the first time in years, or having someone roll out their foot, and feeling less back pain in a minute. The body will always tell us what is wrong, we have to be able to listen close enough and have the chance to step outside of what we know.

My co-worker may be hopeless, but eventually I am sure he will understand what the real reason for his hip flexor tightness is and try to work towards fixing the problem, rather than continuously banging his head against the wall and finding ways to beat the headache and patch the wall.

Dean Somerset
BSc. Kinesiology, CEP, CSCS, MEPD
Medical & Rehabilitation Coordinator, World Health
(780) 686-2276

If you would like to visit, Dean’s blog, 3 Spectrum Fitness.

Rick Kaselj, MS

P.S. – If you wanted to learn more about fascia and how it is important to fitness professionals, check out Muscle Imbalances Revealed as Dean has a full webinar on the topic.