#1 Reason Why Muscles Get Tight

The question I get a LOT is…. “Why am I so tight?”

My standard answer is always.. “I don’t know, I just met you.”

It usually makes them laugh because it is pretty funny, but I’m being serious.
You see unless I follow someone around since birth, and notate all their bodies interaction
with the world, I won’t really know.

People usually have a story to explain their tightness.
The reason I’m tight is because…

1. I don’t exercise enough.
2. I have to sit/stand/walk during the day aka work.
3. I don’t stretch enough.
4. I am old (or getting older).
5. I had an injury
6. I’m stressed

These answers are all wrong. You can do all those things and not be tight.
Right now I’m sure you can think of a handful of people who don’t do those things and feel fine/well. Those people might make you mad because they do nothing and they still feel good.

So the actual number one.. numero uno reason for feeling tight is because at some point muscles got overstretched and then the body reacted by contracting the muscle fibers to prevent further damage.

Before we go farther I want to explain something.
First things first, just know that the body is truly divinely and wonderfully made.
One of the most amazing things is how the human body is always
interacting with the world around it. The body is designed to help you avoid danger
and thrive, not just survive.

So now imagine that the body has millions of little security guards hanging out in
every muscle, ligament, skin, tendon and bone. These little guards all have different specialities for example:
chemoreceptors are on the lookout for chemicals, and the baroreceptors for barometric changes.. and the mechanoreceptors for pressure and movement changes.

Mechanism of the Mechanoreceptors

When a muscle is moved past where it feels safe, this movement is sensed by these receptors and they yell to the brain.. HEY !! DANGER! I'm getting stretched past what I feel is my natural stretchiness limit..

So the brain says…. I'll help you! Then the brain triggers a chemical reaction that makes the muscles tight, contracted to protect from further stretching..damage, and danger.

The body is so amazing at keeping us safe!

Have you ever reached for something awkwardly in the back seat, maybe even while driving at a fast clip, and all of sudden it felt like someone just stabbed you in the shoulder with a knitting needle?

Well, that is a good example of this happening in real life.

What about walking out to the patio holding a tray of delicious turkey sandwiches with crunchy potato chips, then tripping on the doormat bending your foot in half then falling on it? (yes that happened to me), The injury? Well, it was the lower leg, ankle and foot muscles getting overstretched! (then tight).

Here’s a third example.. This is from a client I just saw from Waco Texas last week. She said she finally went to this new stretch place in her town because they kept calling her to come in and check it out. She got stretched, and then the next day she could barely walk and felt like someone was stabbing her in her inner thigh area. She said in order to walk she had to kick her leg out a bit. The technical name for that is a “hitch in the giddy up” I believe.

Here’s one more example.. A man came in with severe back pain for about a year. He had been everywhere and tried everything but was trying Hunter Method. When I came to his legs I laughed and said “have you been doing the Chinese splits lately.” He was an older gentleman. He laughed.. “not me!” Then later on he told me about a trip to India when his back pain started.. he was on an elephant but it felt like his legs were getting ripped out because the animal was so huge, so he turned back early. Oh and that is when his back pain started.

So do you see the trend? The commonality?

Can you see the insanity of doing a hard stretching routine every morning, or even worse paying someone to do that to you …. and you still have your tight hip flexors, shoulder pain, or Sciatica.

This is something I see every single day with new clients.

This is insanity! The truth is that the body is not made up of clay, or pizza dough. It has limits on how much it can be stretched! We all have our own unique genetic make-up. Bendier is not healthier, it just means you kick ass in yoga and gymnastics. You may even be exceptionally bendy like the hypermobile performers on America’s Got Talent. I’ve seen some scary looking acts on that show!

The worst thing is when people try to stretch a part of the body that was injured. Think of what you just learned. When you are injured the brain contracts muscles along that nerve pathway to protect you. It is injurious to try to manually force those muscles back.

You may be thinking .. I don’t stretch so what are other ways that the body gets tight? I made a little blog on that topic too. It is called “Top 5 Reasons Why Muscles Get Tight.”