Knot Your Average Problem - Unravelling the Mystery of Muscle Tightness
What is muscle tightness and do we need to constantly stretch ourselves?
Do you feel like some of your muscles are tight?
Do you stretch and stretch and yet that hamstring still feels like it’s going to ping off like an elastic fucking band?
Ever been told that your tight muscles are the reason why you’re in pain, getting injured or can’t do something like squat ‘properly’? Or maybe you’ve been told that tight muscles are weak and stupid.
Not a day goes by on good old Instagram that I don’t see a post which blames tight muscles for something or offers a solution for tight x y z body part.
There’s a few issues with this.
First of all, muscle tightness does not have a clear or concise definition and doesn’t have a standardised measurement.
The word tight is used interchangeably across many different contexts which aren’t the same - tone, tension, rigidity, spasticity.
When ‘tight’ muscles are scanned using ultra sound or MRI they do not look different to muscles that don’t feel tight.
So what the fuck is going on?
In this deep dive we will cover, what is muscle tightness? Why can’t we see it? What contributes to muscle tightness? Should you worry about it? Do you need more range of motion?
Ok so lets get clear on some language (if we can)
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