Yoga won't fix Tight Muscles...
Lance Dreher, PhD (aka "Doctor Fitness") explains how Yoga is a temporary solution to a long-term problem on the latest #MuscleMonday.
Tight muscles are the result an overdeveloped muscle pulling against it's weaker opposing muscle. If you only stretch the overdeveloped muscle, it will return to a state of tension. With Corrective Exercises, you can address the problem by strengthening the opposing muscle to achieve a balanced state of relaxation.
Have questions for Lance? Comment below, check out www.doctorfitnessaz.com, or call into The Doctor Fitness Radio Show 550 KFYI or at iHeartRadio at (602) 260-5394 on Saturday mornings from 8am-9am MST.
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Transcript by Rev.com
- If you're like the many Americans that are out there that have tight muscles and you're doing Yoga, thinking that it's gonna improve that. You may be doing the wrong thing.
A lot of people do Yoga to fix tight muscles. Tight muscles are a result of muscles being overly developed in one area, the opposing muscle groups are underdeveloped so tightness occurs.
Yoga will not fix that problem. All Yoga does is causes stretching reaction of the muscle itself.
So what we do to fix it is we identify the problem first, which muscle is too strong, which muscle is too weak.
So if my pectorals are tight, I wouldn't stretch the pecs. I work the muscles between the shoulder blades which causes the pectoral muscles, the chest muscles to relax, bringing my shoulders back allowing the muscles between my shoulder blades to relax. I've now identified the problem. So what you do then is you're re-establishing the length of the muscle in a relaxation state. Okay, so if my shoulders are pulled forward, I want to get the shoulders back.
If my hamstrings are tight and I want to get those hamstrings to relax, because those can be overly developed as well. Then I'm gonna exercise the front of the thigh, particularly at the top by keeping the leg straight, almost like a kick. When you lift the leg forward like that with the knee locked, the ankle locked, then the hamstring muscle has to reciprocally elongate or relax.
If you do this, you'll restore muscle balance to the muscle groups. The whole body is set up like that.
If I have lower back tightness and pain then I work the lower abdominals by doing reverse crunches or lower abdominal crunches. That will cause the muscles in the lower back to relax.
If I have tightness in the back of my neck then I work my muscles in the front of my neck by lifting the head up. If I have shoulder pain then of course we have the rotator cuff exercises that you've seen so many on on Muscle Mondays.
The whole body is set up like this Yoga does not fix that problem. Yoga just stretches okay, and if the muscles become too loose then what happens then is there's a lot of stress placed on the joints because the joints become too loose putting a lot of stress on the joints increasing the risk of ligament tears. That's a bad thing.
So again, muscle balance, reset exercises, opposing Yoga. Yoga does not even fit in the same category. Do muscle balancing, resetting exercise, you'll fix those tight spasm muscles. So if you're doing all the corrective exercises that we talk about in our Muscle Mondays.
One other thing that I would add to this, take your MAG SRT. Magnesium causes the muscles to relax and it's really effective in regards to a nutrient that helps muscle spasms, no doubt about it. So if you have tight muscles particularly leg cramps at night then make sure you include MAG SRT, and we'll see you on the next Muscle Monday.
- Guys, you can connect with Lance at doctorfitnessaz.com also his radio show runs on Saturday morning 8:00am to 9:00am here locally in phoenix on 550KFYI and streaming across the internet on iHeartRadio. So look it up. It's the Dr. Fitness show. Lance, good seeing you again man.
