Mind Your Muscles Written

Ever wonder why that unusual pesky knot will never go away or why your wrist keeps hurting whenever you type, or how about these ugly words flatfeet, trigger finger, carpel tunnel syndrome, hammertoes sciatica, plantar fasciitis.

Well what would you say if I told you your muscles have memory of things you can't ever remember? For Example, some repetitive use memories would be, someone who does a lot of typing. The use of the muscles in the arms typing at 75 wpm documents are using their muscles to excess and over use them when the action is repetitive for a long period of time.

A number of things can occur, the muscles shorten, the muscle memory is lost and the muscle now thinks it is suppose to be short and tight. It thinks this is the "normal" shape that it should hang on to. In essence the muscle forgets what it is like to be "normal" or an un-relaxed state. When this happens (oblivious to us) all the muscles pull and stretch at the rest of the arm making everything out of alignment, but it pulls at the sight where the tendon attaches thus resulting in tendonitis, tennis elbow or golfers elbow.

Even though that person doing the typing has never done these sports in their life or how about when the hips and the rotators become over used, the periformis becomes tight, we sometime often call this sciatica.

We train our body to do several tasks that we are hardly aware of, like typing, driving or eating. There are types of muscle memories called proprioception. This is the innervation between the brain and the muscle.

Another muscle memory might be the emotional memory. So how do we restore or return to "Normal" operation.

Well let's talk about stretching.

Blood circulation, I feel is the key!. Blood brings with it life, nutrients, vitamins, water, and oxygen to every place in the body. The Blood is also one of the forms toxins are removed when someone has a repetitive use injury.

In an injury, the blood flow is like a kinked hose; water can get through, but not steady and not often enough to heal properly. This would also cause swelling, or as my instructors used to put it, inflammation is the collection of or the trapping of interstitial fluid.

During an injury, muscles tighten around the injury to help protect the injured sight and prevent further injury. Well as I said before the longer the muscles are tightened, the more possibility it will learn to stay in that formation. Then you have myofascial issues and scar tissues forms. As you know scar tissue will pull on all sides of the muscle adding more memory to an already over taxed injury. We as therapist can help reduce scar tissue but cannot reverse it. But we must help the muscle do the opposite. We must stretch the muscles out with proprioception. If you combine stretching with compression or holding you can complete, reverse or even restore the muscles thinking.

I highly believe from my experience with my clients that proprioceptive stretching for groups of muscles held at a contraction for 20 seconds works wonders for my clients and me. But this is always done with the clients help and never to the point of cutting off circulation. There is no sense cutting off circulation by entrapping the nerves or stretching to far for two long. The blow will not flow; the muscle cannot relax and heal properly with out blood and oxygen in order to stay alive.

This all has to be done with the client pain scope in mind. I have found the best stretch is done when the client does it with no pain at all.

If your in severe pain, check with your Doctor or Chiropractor before doing any stretching.

Michael Bahr is a LMT, Licensed Massage Therapist in Minnesota and can be reached at michael@massagetherapy.com.