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Is muscle tension the enemy?

Hi All,

I'd like to start a discussion about muscle tension. As a massage therapist, it often seems like the aim is to seek soft tissue tension and eliminate it. I would like to challenge this view and start a talk about the use of soft tissue tension. For instance:

1. Back muscles could be tense "splinting" the low back area to avoid a joint subluxating.

2. An athlete may have a tense calf which helps him absorb and release kinetic energy efficiently.

3. An office worker may have tense erector spinea muscles, which allow her to maintain her sitting posture for 8 hours straight.

Another questions is: What would be the consequence of releasing that tension? Without tense erectors, would the office worker fall face first onto her keyboard? Would the athlete lose performance?

I'd like your opinions. Anyone can comment, any idea appreciated.

Cheers

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Amanda Cizek on July 20, 2010 at 7:20pm

Great questions. This is similar to the 'eliminate stress' phrase. We need stress or else we would not get out of bed in the morning. It is not the stress as much as how we handle stressors. So, I think similar with tension... Buckminster Fuller shows how tension is necessary for tensegrity to exist. Our bodies would crumple without tension. We need it in order to handle the stress of movement. It is not tension that is bad, but rather its 'mal-distribution' (if that is a word). When tension becomes misplaced for the task at hand, the body will, in its infinite wisdom, compensate in order to keep tensegrity active (lest we fall over). And then, as with the athlete, remove the tension that helps them to achieve greatness and be prepared to ruin their career. Look at ballerina's and their mal-distributed tension... hardly ideal alignment. But would you mess with re-distributing their tension before they retired?

Permalink Reply by Jason Erickson on July 23, 2010 at 12:51am

I think focusing on the muscles is our first (and most common) error.

Muscles can not be tense, nor can we feel discomfort, nor can we have spasms, etc, - unless the nervous system is involved. We can say we are doing this or that "for the muscles" or "with the muscles", etc. - but ultimately we need to interact with the nervous system in order to elicit a normalizing response.

If we try to understand why the nervous system may be causing our body to feel/respond/function in abnormal ways, we may become able to better understand how to stimulate the nervous system to correct the perceived dysfunction.

Permalink Reply by Rick Johnson on August 4, 2010 at 10:04am

Great point. My studies have led me to investigate the field of Somatic Therapy, where the CNS is directed to turn off hyper-tonic muscles in spasm and/or turn on inhibited muscles that for whatever reason have limited contract-ability.This is done through a series of movements that teach muscular re-education. Positional Release Therapy is also employed to this end.The nervous system dysfunction is the missing component in successful treatment of those individuals that can never seem to relax, in my opinion.

Permalink Reply by Rick Johnson on August 4, 2010 at 10:22am

The difference would seem to be between tone and tension.Toned muscles are always firmer to palpation than non-toned and athletes have more tone than couch potatoes The markers for problematic conditions ( when good tone turns to tension) becomes too much, is pain and/or limited range of motion. Massage doesn't remove proper tone, in fact it can't.It can only , if we are lucky, restore the muscle to it's proper resting length.This, I believe, is proper tone.

Permalink Reply by Paul Clifford on August 16, 2010 at 10:17am

Hi Serge:

This is a really important question, and a lot more complicated than it first looks! For a long time, I had vague ideas about the nature of "muscle tension" and "muscle tone" -- the terms have to be carefully defined. Some of the physiology I had been taught in school was inaccurate or incomplete.

The firmness to palpation of resting muscle has contractile and non-contractile components. The contractile part relates to activity of myosin and actin and can have several causes (spasm, trigger points, 'holding'). The non-contractile part is due to the different physical substances that make up muscle tissue (water, connective tissue, myofibril, and embedded fat).

There is a concise description of resting muscle tension (resting muscle tone) in:

Andrade CK, Clifford P. Outcome-Based Massage 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD; Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2008: 126-128.

Also useful are:

Mense P, Simons DG. Muscle Pain. Philadelphia, PA; Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2001:99-112.

Masi AT, Hannon JC, Human resting muscle tone (HRMT): Narrative introduction and modern concepts. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. 2008;12:320–332.

In light of these readings, your questions become even more interesting! I would say that in most circumstances (including #2 and #3 above) it is a worthwhile goal to make hard muscles more pliable. Spasm is neurologically controlled, and probably can't be affected manually more than minimally. However, it might be possible to increase the pliability of connective tissue associated with a muscle that is spasm -- which might not always be a smart move. Regardless, any local change in hardness of myofascia will have consequences for local muscle performance and for the myofascial 'tensegrity web' which should be considered...the bigger the local change, the bigger the consequences.

Paul

Permalink Reply by Megan Lazaruk on September 2, 2010 at 8:22pm

I have recently been thinking about this too... because of my latest experience with chiropractic treatments. I went to a Chiro for my ulnar/triquetral joint pain from a motion in karate class, that was getting worse due to using it, and the need to correct it before more massage schooling. So, he did some brisk joint maneuvers of yanking my arm while holding the carpals.. and it did improve the wrist pain and lack of motion, but I opted for two of those treatments and then just to immobilize it as much as possible to see if it will heal on its own. As I do not regularly get Chiro treatment, I opted to trust in having a spinal treatment too. Now this is coming to the point... The spinal mobilization "stirred up the pot" of my muscles and imbalance in my back and hips, and gave me some sciatica for a few days, but, took away completely my regular upper trap and levator tension that just never goes away regardless of how much massage I get. So, I was newly impressed with this vertebral mobilizations that seemed to allow or facilitate for my muscles to go into a naturally relaxed state, which is something I rarely have ever experienced. As I'm sure many can relate. ...It's been a few weeks now and the regular Pain is back in the exact same location as usual. hmmmmm do I go back to the Chiro?

Permalink Reply by Stephen Jeffrey on September 3, 2010 at 7:04am

Hi Bodhi, thanks for this abstract the sentence

" It is also conceivable that TrPs provide a nociceptive barrage to the dorsal horn neurons and facilitate joint hypomobility" .

Helps me understand how scar tissue could also trigger hypomobility via a nociceptive barrage hmmmm interesting.
Clients can turn their ankle time and time again = more scar tissue, more strengthening execises from the physio,.......only when you break the bonds of scar tissue will you restore full function to the joint and stop the nociceptive barrage.

I would really appreciate the groups comments here

http://www.massageprofessionals.com/forum/topics/when-scar-tissue-i...

Thanks

Bodhi Haraldsson said:

Here are 2 papers I would like to add to this discussion.
Both discuss muscle "tension" from different perspectives. Increased trapezius pain sensitivity is not associated with increased tissue hardness.: abstract

Interaction between trigger points and joint hypomobility: a clinical perspective -abstract