You’re getting out of the automotive after a protracted drive, or up out of your pc after a annoying workday, and there it’s—that tight, achy feeling in your neck. Your first intuition is to drag your head towards your shoulder, attempting to elongate your stiff, sore muscle mass.
We’ve all been instructed stretching is a good way to maintain your physique free and limber and thrust back any potential achy tightness. However does doing it while you’re already hurting really aid you—or are there higher methods to appease the soreness as a substitute? We tapped bodily therapists, sports activities medication medical doctors, and energy coaches to interrupt all of it down.
The reply relies upon, partially, on why your muscle mass damage within the first place.
To know whether or not stretching sore muscle mass may benefit you, it helps to know what’s behind that ache, board-certified sports activities bodily therapist Leada Malek, DPT, CSCS, writer of the e book Science of Stretch, tells SELF. There are three issues to bear in mind:
- Your muscle mass is likely to be weak.
- Your vary of movement is likely to be restricted because of persistent tightness.
- Your muscle mass could have been (micro)broken because of a troublesome exercise.
Let’s take the primary one. Merely holding your physique in a hard and fast place—say, display screen time or a protracted drive—can fatigue your muscle mass, making them really feel stiff or sore, since they’re working laborious to carry that place. The much less energy and endurance your muscle mass have, the extra inclined you’re to this type of ache, she says.
Secondly, you may also really feel ache in your neck (or different areas) as a result of your muscle mass have shortened or tightened over time, lowering your vary of movement, or how far you’ll be able to transfer your muscle mass or joints within the instructions they’re purported to go. As an illustration, the extra time you spend hunched over screens, the much less flexibility you might need within the muscle mass round your neck and shoulders.
Lastly, in case you’ve simply accomplished a troublesome exercise, you is likely to be coping with delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. While you train for the primary time shortly or change up your routine, you’ll be able to trigger minor harm or microtrauma to your muscle fibers, Susie Reiner, PhD, CSCS, licensed train physiologist and postdoctoral researcher on the College of Kentucky’s Sports activities Medication Analysis Institute, tells SELF. In wholesome muscle, small threadlike elements known as actin and myosin neatly line up subsequent to one another. With DOMs, “all the actin and myosin are mixed in,” Dr. Reiner says. This triggers an inflammatory response, which additional will increase ache and stiffness.
Stretching, when acceptable, may also help in just a few other ways.
While you’re performing a static stretch—say, you’re holding a place for a set period of time—you’re pulling these actin and myosin threads aside, lengthening your muscle mass, Dr. Reiner says. While you’re coping with minor stiffness and ache, stretching sore muscle mass can enhance your mobility and vary of movement within the second, permitting you to maneuver extra freely. Achieved recurrently, it may possibly protect that vary of movement and hold your muscle mass extra versatile and ready to deal with the challenges of your day.