In a recent post on different massage techniques, I mentioned it’s crucial to differentiate between tight muscles and lengthened muscles when forming an exercise program or treatment.
One of the more common ways people and various fitness professionals (personal trainers, massage therapists, physical therapists, etc.) perform this differentiation is by asking the client/patient, “What feels tight?” In my experience this is often a poor way to do things and here’s why:
How often do you ever say something is tight when just lying in bed? For example, you just had a good leg workout. It’s unlikely you’d be lying in bed the next day and say to yourself, “Man, my legs feel tight.”
However, get out of bed, bend over to pick something up and you’re much more likely to think to yourself, “Man, the back of my legs are tight.”
In other words, you rarely ever notice a muscle being tight until it is stretched.
Therefore, sometimes when a client says something feels tight that’s because that muscle is actually stretched out, chronically. As this can often be a site of pain, this means the worst thing to do would be trying to stretch the muscle even further!
The most common example of this I see is with the neck and shoulders, especially in women. All the time women will say to me their neck feels tight and attribute it to stress. However, look at their neck/shoulders and they often resemble this:
Looking at one of the muscles that attach from the neck to the shoulders (upper traps) we can see how the shoulders are hanging low compared to normal.
Therefore, the upper traps are “looser” than normal. Meaning they are chronically stretched. Hence your neck feels tight, but it isn’t.
Like I said, I see this more in women due to things such as carrying purses, carrying children, the pull of bra straps on the outside of the shoulders (especially in women with larger breasts). Basically they engage in lots of activities that pull the shoulders down.
In this case, to help get rid of the tight feeling we actually want to tighten the upper traps. In fact, a lot of times you can make the person’s neck feel better by just lifting their arm up so their shoulder is closer to their neck, proving that scrunching the neck (form of tightening the upper traps) will give them pain relief. Or if the person is sitting, placing something under their elbows, so their arms aren’t hanging, will make them feel better.
This helps reassure the client that you’re not just talking out of your ass as they have probably never had their neck issue approached in this manner before.
Interestingly enough, look again at these pictures and you can see tape on the girl’s shoulders. That’s actually helping to pull the shoulders toward the neck (tightening effect). Reading her write-up here. She mentions this helped alleviate her pain tremendously. However, while she believes it to be related to the tape relaxing her upper traps, it’s really due to the tape helping the upper traps contract (tighten) better.
<– Notice the line of pull of the tape is very similar to the line of pull of the traps –>
This helps illustrate how doing a stretch like the below, which is often prescribed for those with neck pain or neck “tightness,” is a terrible stretch in this case. The following stretch would actually be doing the opposite of what the tape is doing, stretching the neck even more!
If you’re performing various activities that pull the shoulders downward, the last thing you want to do is a stretch/exercise that pulls the shoulders down even more.
The stretch may feel nice in the interim, but that pain isn’t going anywhere long-term.
You can’t always go on how you feel.
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Helping yourself isn’t as easy at it appears at first. Get one on one help from me instead.
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Holly Rivera
August 23, 2011
It works and it makes sense. I have less shoulder and neck pain since working with you and I feel better!
reddyb
August 23, 2011
Even at the age of 30! 🙂 Thank you Holly.
We gotta get you up on the testimonial page soon too. Start looking for some good before photos!
Patty Sierra
August 23, 2011
Great post, Brian! This is great. I had to move to Boise earlier than expected to give a performance at my 40 year reunion! and had no chance to meet with you. Wild times. I am forever gratefull for your training and expertise. Keep up the energy! I will meet up again one day. Annie loves your posts, too!
reddyb
August 23, 2011
Sorry we missed eachother; thank you for the kind words. Hopefully I’ll see you and Annie again sometime soon. Tell her I said hi!
Sam
June 27, 2012
Can loose upper traps also be combined with loose romboids? Because when I do push ups my shoulder blades don’t fully touch each other only the upper part,the lower part is turned to the outside. I also have scapula winging.
reddyb
June 27, 2012
What’s up Sam,
I’ve never seen such a case, and I have trouble imagining such a scenario.
If your shoulder blades are touching one another at the top portion it sounds like your rhomboids are working, thus, they are not “loose.”
If you look at the anatomy of the rhomboids you can see they attach to the top of the shoulder blades. See here http://www.exrx.net/Muscles/Rhomboids.html
Check this out for a lot more information on scapular winging: http://b-reddy.org/2011/06/02/example-of-impaired-movement-causing-pain/
Sam
June 29, 2012
Thank you.
Mike
January 5, 2013
Hey Brian, quick question – what do you think of Active Release Technique (ART) as a general treatment technique?
reddyb
January 5, 2013
Hey Mike,
I like ART and have had it done on myself quite a bit, although it was many years ago.
I actually had one of the chiropractors of the U.S. Olympic team work on me.
It’s a good way to get some immediate relief, however, it’s not a long term fix.
Barry Snow
August 17, 2017
i love your info-real detailed and insightful
I have a a question I do biofeedback and notice highly elevated trapezius EMG in headache pts When I train them in lowering ievels of muscle tension, headaches improve with increased cervical ROM. How does this fit with your approach that the muscle is really too lengthened, rather than overactive ?
b-reddy
August 18, 2017
Hey Barry,
Thank you for the nice words. I know the headache – muscle tension approach has a lot of followers out there. It’s one scenario I’ve yet to see. Have had a couple people where we worked on e.g. forward head posture, but nothing headache wise changed.
That said, I have seen people where the upper traps are clearly not elongated. Where the upper traps may be shortened, such as shoulders are shrugged up into the ears some. (Just haven’t seen any connection to headaches with these people.) This is a common position in someone who is stressed. For instance, when someone is scared (high level form of stressed), they tend to shrug the shoulders into the ears. Think when a loud sound comes by. Lots of stress => lots of headaches => lots of upper trap activity? Getting more range of motion often goes with getting a person to relax => get that ROM / relaxation around the neck => reduction in headaches?
So I suppose I’d first say headaches and a lengthened trapezius may very well not fit together. In this post I detail how the feeling of tightness can mean something is excessively stretched. I’m not sure I’d equate feeling tense with tightness, though I understand some clients / patients may conflate the two. Or, they often say “My neck feels tight / tense.” They may very well have a tight sensation in their upper traps, but a tense sensation in the levator scapulae, such as in downwardly rotated shoulders, where the upper trap stretches, but the levator can be shortened.