One of the biggest reasons people hold off starting to exercise is pain. Muscle pain, joint pain, or even the psychological dread of a tough workout. Understandable, since exercise can be especially tough when you’re starting out. However! Both exercise and soft tissue treatment are key parts in keeping you moving well in the short and long-term. And it actually doesn’t take much of the right work to minimise pain during training and daily life.
Ready to get pain free?
These three DIY steps focus primarily on loosening and lengthening your muscles and connective tissues – leading to decreased joint stress and optimal joint alignment – and then improving muscle strength. Follow these steps. You’ll keep your body working efficiently and minimize the stiffness and pain that can prevent good quality movement.
Step 1: Loosen
Muscles that are too tight don’t work efficiently. Too much muscle tension can decrease muscle contraction speed and force. Since the speed and force of contraction are what creates movement and supports your body, this is less than optimal. Plus, tight muscles generally don’t feel great?!
There are many reasons you might have tight muscle. They can spasm and hold tension to protect a sore or injured area. Tension can build from long-standing compensations due to injury or tissue damage, or can be caused by repeated postures and work or lifestyle demands.
Note also: Muscles can be short and tight (over-contracted) like your bunched up, tight shoulders. They can also be long and tight (over-stretched) like a stretched rubber band. (Yes, those two analogies don’t go together but you get it!)
The fascia (connective tissue) surrounding and within the muscle can also get stiff and thick, impacting muscle contraction ability. We refer to muscle and fascia together as “soft tissue”, or clinically as myofascia.
“Loosen” is step one because it has the greatest impact on the other two steps. A muscle with optimal tension, supported by pliable fascia, will stretch and strengthen better.
Different loosening techniques include:
1. Hands-on techniques like deep tissue massage or remedial massage therapy, myofascial release, and trigger point therapy, and
2. Self-massage techniques using a foam roller, trigger point ball, massage sticks, massage guns, and other similar tools.
Step 2: Lengthen
Done right, stretching (including flexibility and mobility work) keeps joints moving freely and easily, prevents soft tissue tension build-up, and allows you to keep doing life the way you want to.
The Lengthen step comes after Loosen, because muscles that are too tight don’t stretch well. For most people, stretching after doing soft tissue work gives the best results.
There are many ways that to stretch. Traditional static stretching, dynamic stretching (stretching with movement), PNF stretching, or assisted stretching are all options. No matter what you choose, aim to hold the stretch for a minimum of 30 seconds. It takes at least that long for the tissues to develop flexibility that sticks. Less time and they seem to bounce back to original length like a rubber band.
One caveat to the Lengthen step: If you have a hypermobility condition (i.e. double jointed), stretching can make things worse.
In hypermobility conditions, connective tissues are much more lax. This gives joints very high degrees of movement (aka joint laxity), and can increase injury risk when you add more stretching on top of it. Since your body’s #1 goal is to not get hurt ever, the reaction to this laxity is to create more tension in the muscle around the joint. Tension makes you feel like you need to stretch, but that’s actually the opposite of what your body needs.
If you are hypermobile, skip this step and do more self-massage (or go for a good remedial massage) to decrease muscle tension. Building muscle strength (step three) will decrease feelings of muscle tension and decrease injury risk.
To a lesser degree, stretching muscles that are already overstretched might feel good, but won’t be a long-term fix. In this case, you want to stretch the muscles on the opposite side of the joint, since they tend to be too short.
Step 3: Strengthen
The first two steps are all about getting tight, short (or long!) muscles ready to contract optimally. Step three starts with turning the weaker muscles on, and building into a well balanced strength program.
Muscle weakness can be caused by a number of things:
- Too much muscle tension
- Muscle that is overstretched or posturally lengthened
- Muscle fatigue (often due to repetitive use or compensation patterns)
- Nervous system fatigue
Once you start getting your soft tissue tension and length under control, it’s time to start putting those muscles to work. The Strengthen step is how we retrain your nervous system to use the right muscles, at the right time, for any given movement.
During the early stages of the Strengthen step, we focus on rebuilding nervous system signalling to the weak muscles. (A stronger nervous system signal leads to a stronger contraction.)
As your ability to contract the muscle gets better, we then start challenging it with more strength-specific exercises. Then we use that strength to mimic movements that you use in daily life – for work, chores, or fun stuff.
Everyone has their own unique sets of weak and tight muscles, which can impact different movements differently, even in the same body. If you plan your own programs, having a session with a coach or trainer can help you determine your weakest links.
Putting it together
How much time you should spend in each of these stages will depend on your starting point. To figure this out when starting with a client, I look at movement quality, normal activity levels, injury and health history, lifestyle, and goals. The art of creating the best program for YOU means understanding what your body needs in order to handle the activities you love, and then simply working through the steps.
If you have questions about how these steps might apply to you, please reach out and ask.
What do you think?