Do you think that you can loosen the pain out of tight muscles? Too often, my clients think that stretching tight muscles will make their upper back pain go away.
But to relieve soreness and tension, and to stay pain-free, you must focus on balancing the muscles.
No, we are not talking about balance like a gymnast on a beam.
We mean that it is essential to balance the workload of your major muscle groups if you want relief.
Understanding muscle balance.
Your muscles work in groups.
And the groups work in balance with each other.
When one group is overworked, another group is underworked.
As a result, one set of muscles becomes tight.
Simultaneously, its opposing muscles become weak.
When there is imbalance like this, we feel tension, and then pain, which lead to injury.
Upper body balance.
The muscles of the upper back coordinate with the muscles in the upper front of the body.
If the arms, chest, and front shoulder are working too hard, you will feel a strain in the upper back.
It is only natural that the front muscles work hard because our eyes lead them.
And our eyes are on the fronts of our bodies.
Wrong information leads to poor treatment.
The muscle relationships in the upper body are often misunderstood.
We neglect the overworked muscles.
We focus only on the muscles that feel sore or tight.
We relieve immediate pain, but we ignore the other muscle groups causing the imbalance.
The muscles in the upper back are especially vulnerable to weakness.
If we want to effectively treat tension and pain in our upper backs muscles, we must understand the strong-weak patterns that develop throughout the upper body.
When we strengthen weak muscles in back, and ease tight muscles in front, then we can reverse muscle imbalance and relieve pain.