A cool way to get people to move more is to say “a tight muscle is a weak muscle.” It’s a platitude that is hard to fully confirm. 🙃
There’s more to the equation of pain management. also, there’s a spectrum among your body feeling something negative as a motivator for change and your body signaling structural damage.
You can feel tightness because of muscle length, joint capsules, anatomic variations, neural tension, or overuse of the muscle itself (or you truly might be weak in general…and that is ok!). rarely is it because of inability to fully recruit or “activate” a single muscle.
Tightness is more than just your range of motion. It’s in your brain, too. Pain responses are multifactorial!
Post hoc reasoning finds its way into too many corners of the training and rehabilitation world🙃 Take that thinking one step further and treat movement like you approach research.
The feeling of tightness can be relieved by increased blood flow to a muscle. It can get more sensory input from strength work, thus changing your perception of the tightness. There are thousands of way to assess and improve these conditions. exhaust all the options; otherwise, find a reputable professional with credentials to guide you to relief.
So movement is good, right? of course! ✅ Just make sure you’re taking the time to challenge different parts of your body among different modalities and keep it moving when things feel tight so you understand what needs more attention.
tl;dr try more shit you’re not good at—it helps you.
Move your body. Everyday.
