If your muscles get out of balance – some too tense or tight, and others too loose or flacid – it is easy to have muscle strain.
Here is an example. You may recognize this pain that lots of us experience: The one on your back, between your spine and your shoulder blade. If you are right-handed, it will be on your right side.
It feels like a knot, and almost feels like it is burning. Do you know that pain?
Here is what happened. The muscles in the front of your body, chest and arm, and probably your neck, become shorter and tighter. This occurs because most of the time we hold our heads our arms in front of our bodies. That makes the muscles in front become tight.
Unless you work to strengthen your back muscles, your tighter, stronger front muscles will win the body war. They will make your body shorter in front and these shortened muscles will “pull” on the weaker muscles in your back.
Your back muscles are getting stretched because they are not as strong as your front muscles. Your back muscles go into a type of contraction, or spasm, to keep from being damaged by further stretching. The stretching strains the back muscles.
You feel the contraction as pain or burning. Your body is complaining. It says, “Please fix me!”
When an area is stretched for a long time, or overstretched, the result is muscle strain.
How can you fix this?
Getting a strong back will balance your stronger front-of-body muscles. A strong back will help you avoid muscle strain in your back. A strong back will prevent your back muscles from being overstretched.
Strong hamstrings (the muscles on the back of your thighs) will help you avoid hamstring strain.
Strong muscles in the back of your neck will help prevent muscle strain that causes headaches. When the muscles around the base of your skull or at the sides of your neck become strained, you can get a headache.
Strengthening the back of your neck will help you hold your head in the proper position to avoid straining those muscles.
There are Simple Strengthening Tips here to help you get a strong back side and more to come.
It is never too late to change our bodies for the better.
Bodies sometimes just need a little assistance from us to feel better and perform better.
You can do it!
Find more natural self-help at SimplePainRelief.com.
