Why are our muscles tight?

Why are our muscles tight?

Look at this picture of the subway system. Let's call Braintree your brain (too on the nose?). All movement starts with signals from your brain, then travels down the nervous system system. If Braintree is your brain the red line is your spinal chord.

The blue line can be movement pathways to your legs and feet.

Orange line your core.

Green line your arms and so on...

Imagine now that all these pathways are written in Chalk. Eventually you get injured, or jammed, or stop using a certain movement path: you smudge the Chalk. The movement path isn't as clear; You lose full range of motion in your shoulder, for example, or your hips fire but can't relax.

This is why we are tight. Or weak. Or can't perform certain movements. Your signal is imperfect, or non existent. You've smudged the Chalk.

You're not stuck in this present incarnation of your body. Every movement is a skill that can be repaired or retrained. It's a question of finding the right exercise or drill to redraw the chalk. These drills or exercises are seldom obvious.

I have tight hips. Another way to say that: the contract signal from my brain to my hip complex is too good; the relax signal needs work.

I undertook a 21 day hip opening challenge ($60). Every day for about 15 minutes I followed an expertly deigned stretching program to loosen them up.

Stretch your tight muscles. Why hadn't I thought of this? No warm up. No muscle activation. No joint mobilization. Just sit in some tough stretches for 15 minutes; relax and breathe.

If you can't tell already I wasn't impressed. There was no nuance to this program. I'm trying to move like someone who is comfortable in his body yet every stretch session was uncomfortable.

I reassessed hip range of motion (ROM) after a particularly long and uncomfortable stretch session. Improved; but...

I'd seen better results from joint mobilization, muscle activation or foam rolling. Those took seconds, not minutes, and were a hell of a lot easier.

Sometimes the right signal to loosen your hips is stretching for 15 minutes (Yawn). Maybe.

But sometimes it’s mobilizing your ankle…

Or flossing a nerve.

Were trying to move gracefully. Graceful movement is just the right amount, applied with the right amount of force, at just the right time.

There are many ways to redraw your chalk lines, but if their application doesn't feel graceful, or elegant, the end result won't be graceful or elegant either.