The Stay Active Clinic

This is part two of an educational series about active and passive connective tissues and their ability to move: your flexibility.  In Part I we addressed WHY flexibility was important, and the two factors limiting your flexibility.  Today we will address one of those limits in depth, how it occurs, why it occurs, and how to deal with it.

Neurological restriction is a term given to the amount of tension in the muscle that can be released reflexively and immediately. The way a muscle creates tension (in essence, shortens) is by a signal from your brain telling it to shorten or lengthen.  This can be something controlled by the conscious mind or can be automatic like a reflex.  When this tension limits your range of motion, it is termed neurological restriction.

“I’m so stiff from those squats on Friday.”  Ever notice that after a good workout you feel stiff and maybe a bit sore?  That is neurological tension and it is an example of your nervous system’s limit to your flexibility.  In a workout your body creates a small amount of damage to the muscle tissue.  In order to deal with this, your nervous system tightens down the surrounding muscles to aid the healing process and prevent further damage.  This increase in tension “protects” the muscles, and as suchneurological tension can be termed protective tension.

The stiffness and soreness of your muscles after a workout is termed delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).  However, DOMS is only one mechanism of protective tension.  There are actually three methods to develop protective tension:

1)      Protecting weakened muscles – Not only does the tension that occurs in the days following your workout protect your muscles, it can do so DURING a workout.  Ever feel like you’re unable to squat any deeper and the coach is saying “ALL THE WAY DOWN”?  That is because your muscles are tiring and neurological tension is stopping your range.  At this point, you must rest the tired muscles, if even for a brief moment, and then return to the activity.  Continuing exercise through a shorter range will not improve your strength through the full range.

2)      Protecting damaged joints – Either when a joint is not sitting properly at the center of its axis of rotation, or part of the joint is injured, your body will tighten the muscles to limit joint range of motion.  This is also termed “splinting”.  This is less applicable to your daily training, but if you ever notice an injury to a joint, you will also notice the increase in tension of the muscles around the joint.  Now you can be aware.

3)      Protect nerve tissue – Nerves need to slide between muscles throughout a movement.  Sometimes they can become adhered or scarred to the surrounding connective tissue and do not slide.  As such, when the movement creates a pull on the nerve your muscles will contract to limit the movement and therefore limit the pull.  If you continue to pull on the nerve it can result in neurological symptoms like numbness, tingling, weakness, or sharp/burning pain.  This can also be the cause of injuries like sciatica and carpal tunnel syndrome.

These are the ways that protective tension develops.  Now you need to know how to deal with it on a daily basis.

1)      Warm-ups are a way to reduce some of that neurological tension.  Especially with day to day training, a warm-up is imperative to alleviate a lot of tension and soreness.  By warming up you increase blood flow and reduce a small amount of the protective tension and your body is able to get into certain positions easier and without compensation.  If the warm-up for your workout does NOT alleviate the tension, you either need another day to recover or you have more serious joint/nerve damage and should consult a professional.

2)      You should not “get tight” in the middle of a workout.  This is a serious warning sign that more serious damage is about to occur.  If an area is tight during a workout, be sure to seek help from a professional.  If you are a CrossFit Asheville member, this is a definite time to inform the coach of the situation and then set up a CFA Triage appointment with the Stay Active Clinic.

3)      Decreases in ANY stress will decrease overall tension.  If you’re not eating/sleeping/thinking well you will increase and prolong daily protective tension from training.  This means you need to eat/sleep/think better.

4)      Hold yourself to functional Range Of Motion standards.  We, as coaches at CFA, spend much of our time ensuring you reach full ranges and you must do the same.  Muscles only get strong through the range they are used.  A more shallow squat does not strengthen that deeper squat.

5)      Foam rolling, lacrosse ball work, and mobility drills (as done in many of our warm-ups) are excellent at reducing protective tension on a daily basis.  Use these as tools for recovery.  Basically, a tangential force (pushing into the muscle from outside) will cause a reflexive relaxation of that muscle… this is the function of the foam rollers and lacrosse balls.  A relaxing spa massage will do the same thing, but that is far more expensive and difficult to fit into your schedule.

You will battle the first type of protective tension on a daily basis when training.  This is simply a physiological fact and must be obeyed to achieve optimal success.  Doing so will limit your acquisition of certain mechanical tensions (adhesions, scarring).  A more in depth look at mechanical tensions and the relationship to protective tensions is to come.

I am often asked, “What should I do for workouts?”  My basic answer is “something that achieves your goals”.

I write workouts for specialized athletes as well as general fitness athletes.  For specialized athletes my objective is based on what movements they need for their competition and other movements they need for health is supplemental.  For a White-water kayaker he needs explosive pulling with the arms and shoulders with a well timed propulsion of the hips.  Dynamic pullups are a fantastic way to achieve this.  Though a kayaker does not push I program some pushing activities to avoid overuse injury.

The general fitness individual however is looking to improve their lives… make their everyday activity easier.  For this I typically do not need to focus on certain movements, but instead need to take a broad scope understanding of what their daily activities are.  This equates to a few necessary ideals that each individual should take into account for their movement health.

1) You must lift, squat, push, pull, run and jump.  These are the basics of human movement and you MUST engage all of these to be healthy.  No amount of “machine” workouts will give you the health incurred by these movements.  Has someone told you not to squat or jump because they are bad for you?  Not true… you just need to do them correctly.

2) Move slowly for long periods of time.  This is something I cannot help you with and is just something you need to do.  Whether swimming, biking, or hiking it needs to be slow, easy, and of significant distance.  Notice I did not say “jog”.  In another post I will discuss why jogging is terrible for you.

2) Move heavy things.  You MUST move heavy things.  When something is heavy, we use a greater percentage of muscle tissue.  This is NOT possible lifting something light a lot of times.  ONLY lifting heavy will allow you access that portion of muscle.

3) Move fast for short periods.  This goes along with lifting heavy things.  By moving fast we access more muscle tissue which is not the same as moving slowly for long periods.

4) Do the above through your fully accessible joint ranges along multiple planes.  This is VERY important.  By avoiding your normally available ranges you tighten joints and muscles.  Now, when your life NEEDS that further range your body has to find a compensatory way to move which leads to injury.

5) Do this correctly.  Old injuries, sustained postures, and repetitive movements will lead to restictions and compensations in movement.  Any of the above causing you discomfort is NOT reason to stop them, but instead reason to do them BETTER.

To summarize: Lift, squat, push, pull, jump and run; move slowly for long periods; move heavy things; move fast for short periods; do this through full ranges along multiple planes.  If you are not doing all of this, or any of it causes you pain, your movement is not healthy.

A description of how movement abnormality leads to IT band pain and how our clinic identifies and removes it.

IT band syndrome in distance runners

Chiropractic theory is based around healing the whole body.  This article is a brief description of the scientific research of wellness and how our clinic approaches this in a unique manner.

Chiropractic Wellness — The Modern Paradigm