To Stretch — Part II
This is part two of an educational series about active and passive connective tissues and their ability to move: your flexibility. In Part I we addressed WHY flexibility was important, and the two factors limiting your flexibility. Today we will address one of those limits in depth, how it occurs, why it occurs, and how to deal with it.
Neurological restriction is a term given to the amount of tension in the muscle that can be released reflexively and immediately. The way a muscle creates tension (in essence, shortens) is by a signal from your brain telling it to shorten or lengthen. This can be something controlled by the conscious mind or can be automatic like a reflex. When this tension limits your range of motion, it is termed neurological restriction.
“I’m so stiff from those squats on Friday.” Ever notice that after a good workout you feel stiff and maybe a bit sore? That is neurological tension and it is an example of your nervous system’s limit to your flexibility. In a workout your body creates a small amount of damage to the muscle tissue. In order to deal with this, your nervous system tightens down the surrounding muscles to aid the healing process and prevent further damage. This increase in tension “protects” the muscles, and as such neurological tension can be termed protective tension.
The stiffness and soreness of your muscles after a workout is termed delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS). However, DOMS is only one mechanism of protective tension. There are actually three methods to develop protective tension:
1) Protecting weakened muscles – Not only does the tension that occurs in the days following your workout protect your muscles, it can do so DURING a workout. Ever feel like you’re unable to squat any deeper and the coach is saying “ALL THE WAY DOWN”? That is because your muscles are tiring and neurological tension is stopping your range. At this point, you must rest the tired muscles, if even for a brief moment, and then return to the activity. Continuing exercise through a shorter range will not improve your strength through the full range.
2) Protecting damaged joints – Either when a joint is not sitting properly at the center of its axis of rotation, or part of the joint is injured, your body will tighten the muscles to limit joint range of motion. This is also termed “splinting”. This is less applicable to your daily training, but if you ever notice an injury to a joint, you will also notice the increase in tension of the muscles around the joint. Now you can be aware.
3) Protect nerve tissue – Nerves need to slide between muscles throughout a movement. Sometimes they can become adhered or scarred to the surrounding connective tissue and do not slide. As such, when the movement creates a pull on the nerve your muscles will contract to limit the movement and therefore limit the pull. If you continue to pull on the nerve it can result in neurological symptoms like numbness, tingling, weakness, or sharp/burning pain. This can also be the cause of injuries like sciatica and carpal tunnel syndrome.
These are the ways that protective tension develops. Now you need to know how to deal with it on a daily basis.
1) Warm-ups are a way to reduce some of that neurological tension. Especially with day to day training, a warm-up is imperative to alleviate a lot of tension and soreness. By warming up you increase blood flow and reduce a small amount of the protective tension and your body is able to get into certain positions easier and without compensation. If the warm-up for your workout does NOT alleviate the tension, you either need another day to recover or you have more serious joint/nerve damage and should consult a professional.
2) You should not “get tight” in the middle of a workout. This is a serious warning sign that more serious damage is about to occur. If an area is tight during a workout, be sure to seek help from a professional. If you are a CrossFit Asheville member, this is a definite time to inform the coach of the situation and then set up a CFA Triage appointment with the Stay Active Clinic.
3) Decreases in ANY stress will decrease overall tension. If you’re not eating/sleeping/thinking well you will increase and prolong daily protective tension from training. This means you need to eat/sleep/think better.
4) Hold yourself to functional Range Of Motion standards. We, as coaches at CFA, spend much of our time ensuring you reach full ranges and you must do the same. Muscles only get strong through the range they are used. A more shallow squat does not strengthen that deeper squat.
5) Foam rolling, lacrosse ball work, and mobility drills (as done in many of our warm-ups) are excellent at reducing protective tension on a daily basis. Use these as tools for recovery. Basically, a tangential force (pushing into the muscle from outside) will cause a reflexive relaxation of that muscle… this is the function of the foam rollers and lacrosse balls. A relaxing spa massage will do the same thing, but that is far more expensive and difficult to fit into your schedule.
You will battle the first type of protective tension on a daily basis when training. This is simply a physiological fact and must be obeyed to achieve optimal success. Doing so will limit your acquisition of certain mechanical tensions (adhesions, scarring). A more in depth look at mechanical tensions and the relationship to protective tensions is to come.
Post questions to comments.
-Coach Corey
This is great information! You should add a tab to this site so members can reference this and your other informative posts months from now. Thanks for the education.
Congratulations to Shanna for her AMAZING finish in the Bele Chere 5K!!!!!
http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100724/SPORTS/100724013/Bele-Chere-women-s-overall-results
I have been thinking alot about this lately. I upped my workout schedule from 3 days a week to 5 days a week. I haven’t noticed many gains even though I have been working out almost twice as much. I have been tight most of the week. I have pondered switching back to 3 days a week but doing yoga on tuesday and thursday. I don’t think I have been doing enough stretching to support the amount of work I have been doing.
Out in Cali, and still learning from you guys! Thanks Corey. One question on paleo, does goat milk become paleo if you milk it yourself? Damn, I hope so….
I have realized that (until recently) I have treated foam rolling and mobility drills as part of my warm up. I understood the purpose of these drills as freeing up tension to reach full ROM. I am really glad these were listed separately in this post.
It has been a recent lesson learned for me, but has been very helpful in muscle recovery to continue these during the day. I also have recently learned that mobility drills should not be replaced by stretches (supplemented is more correct).
CFA is an incredibly special gym because of the daily access we have to a wonderful teacher and doctor.
This post is really helpful, Corey. I think this one needs to be reinforced in class often.
I’m interested not only in your specific response to Carly. Are there some general rules of thumb to share with us or does this require a highly individualized response?
Regarding the nerve problem such as radial nerve issues, is using a lacrosse ball and foam roller advised even though it burns sharply? And where to apply these up and down the arm? The nerve feels very exposed at the elbow and thus more tender but not at other points on the arm.
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As you will see in later posts… the protective tension is dealt with on a daily basis. In my experience, a lot can be gained with proper technique, full ROM, strength training/conditioning but there is a window of ability available. Things like foam rolling, lax ball work, yoga and other meditation/relaxation movements can decrease neurological tension but do little for actual reduction of mechanical tension (to be discussed later).
For now, my training frequency is based largely on how tight I feel.
-If I feel fine without warming up I go at 100% in WOD’s.
-If I feel a little tight, but fine while warming up, I’ll go 80-90%.
-If I feel pretty tight, like I notice it regularly throughout the day, and am fine after a warm-up I’ll go at 50-70% effort… really not pushing but moving through the activity.
-If I’m tight after the warm-up, I take a rest day.
Notice I never train above 100% or below 50%. My stiffness is directly related to my sleep, diet, mental stressors, and recent training history.
I am FAR more mobile than I used to be and don’t do much yoga or stretching. I DO train through full ranges, and have had quite a bit of manual therapy (to be explained later). When I first started, I ignored the tight muscles and thought it was “cool” to workout while incredibly sore (sore/stiff after the warm-up)… it didn’t get me anywhere.
Re: Nerve tension/adhesion
I would not advise using those devices if the burning travels. Irritation and damage can occur as well… I sometimes have to tell people NOT to foam roll so much. If using them causes the burning to travel, set up an appointment with me and we’ll address it further. Sometimes it can be pain referral of a tender muscle point(trigger point), other times it is an irritation of nerve damage. The location matters a great deal in this manner.
If a nerve is damaged you must remove what is causing the damage: This could be training beyond what your technique allows, training intensity that is beyond the available recovery capacity, or simply an excess of damage/dysfunction in the past that must be removed.