Nancy Jackson
Remedial Massage Therapist, Healthy Connections
Much like people, our muscles will always try to find the easiest path.
So, when one muscle is tighter than its opponents, it will pull your joints towards the tighter side. A lot of injuries and pains are caused by these imbalances in the body.
Tissue release and muscle strengthening can work together to re-tune your body to optimum health. By working the weaker muscles and loosening the tightened muscles, you can recreate balance to your system.
A common example of a muscle imbalance is neck and shoulder pain:
- The muscles in the front of your chest get tight, bringing your shoulders forward.
- As the shoulders are positioned forwards, the muscles at the back of your neck and between your shoulder blades are over-stretched.
- You start to get pain at the back of your neck and/or between your shoulder blades from being pulled into this position.
That’s all well and good, but how do we go about fixing it?
By creating more balance in the muscles, you can relieve this pain.
Two Steps for Muscle Balance
Step 1: For release of a tightened muscle, you can do some targeted stretching, apply heat or massage the area.
Booking a remedial massage can help release your tight muscles and help you start feeling good again, but these muscles are usually tight for a reason. They may end up taking on the same load as they did before and end up in exactly the same state. Following up with step 2 becomes important to ensure this does not happen again.
Step 2: By strengthening the weaker muscles, we allow them to take some of the load that has been pushed onto other parts of the body. As the tight muscles are no longer over-loaded, they can finally relax and put an end to the pain cycle you may be in.
You can book a session with an exercise physiologist to determine which muscles need to be strengthened and get a plan of how to do it.
In this example you would:
- Step 1 - Release your chest muscles to reduce the tension bringing the shoulders forward, opening the chest.
- Step 2 - Strengthen your upper back muscles giving more stability to the posture, countering the pull of the chest muscles.
Remedial massage and exercise physiology work extremely well together, like two peas in a pod providing balance to your body.