{Guest Post}- My Muscle Did What?
I'm tapping out and subbing in the big guns again this week!
My dude, my Doctor, my preferred Physical Therapist for all things health, Doctor Dan Ellis wrote a gem of a piece for us all this week.
Fun fact about Dan...I have him listed as my General Physician for everything in my life...seriously, I see him for everything...
I asked Dan to write about all the over-complicated words and phrases that are often heard in a rehabilitation setting.
Dan didn't disappoint!
I think you are going to learn a lot from his piece and I hope it helps you in the future when navigating aches and pains!
Without further adieu, Doctor Dan Ellis!
My muscle did what?
If you’ve played sports, worked out long enough, and/or lived life hard enough, you have most likely come in contact with someone like me; a physical therapist. Whether it was a short stint, long haul, or just intermittently for maintenance, you most likely heard your therapist say a lot; some made sense, some did not, and some left you scratching your head. Today, I’m going to debunk one of the most common things I hear patients regurgitate that a former provider has said to them.
“My muscle is turned off” is the singularly most common statement that I hear. I’m here to let you know that unless you had a central nerve (spinal cord) or peripheral nerve (the rest of the nerves outside of the spinal cord and brainstem) injury, your muscle probably didn’t just wake up one day and decide to rage quit. With that in mind, there are a lot of funky things that can happen in the body that can lead to muscle inhibition. Muscle inhibition is quite common and can be caused by a multitude of factors. Three of the most common are explained below.
1) Swelling.
Most people seek help after injury. Post injury there is usually some level of swelling present. Swelling can cause a disruption in your body’s ability to know where it is in space along with causing a delay in how quickly and forcefully the muscles around the joint can contract. Imagine putting on the old driver’s education drunk goggles and trying to back down your driveway on a snowy morning. You may be able to accomplish the task, but you’re going to go a lot slower than normal, be a little nervous, and have a much higher risk of injuring yourself (or your car) than normal. This is much like how the body adapts to swelling; it slows things down, tries to protect the area, and can’t make quick responses in its impaired state. Is the system broken? No. But is the system working efficiently? Absolutely not. This down regulation will cause the muscle to test and feel weak but will improve as the swelling does.
2) Pain.
There is a lot to this one and this is frequently where we see people with avoidance weakness or muscle inhibition. In the early phases pain can be protective - as humans we’ve only had diagnostic and effective medical care for a very short time in history; so how did we cope before you could go to the doctor’s office for some steroids? Pain exists to change our movement patterns in a protective or splinting fashion to avoid further injury. The problem is, pain for long periods of time isn’t always still protective and can actually cause changes in movement patterns. These changes in movement can cause adaptive changes and make a muscle appear weak or maybe even like it is “turned off.” But do not fear! It can be fixed. Performing small, targeted, pain-free movements will help restore normal firing patterns. The goal is to restore more normal movement and muscle firing sequences to decrease abnormal wear and tear.
3) Muscular imbalances.
Since many of us aren’t out working fields, foraging, living that hunter gatherer lifestyle 365 days a year we end up stuck in positions that aren’t natural for our bodies. Sitting 8-10 hours a day is not good for you regardless of how ergonomically sound your office chair is. Being stuck in one position for extended periods causes adaptive shortening and lengthening of certain muscle groups. A common one is hip flexors. If you think you’re going to have strong glutes (hip extensors) when your hip flexors won’t even allow you to get past a neutral position, you're most likely dreaming… and that 30 second hip flexor stretch before working out isn’t going to offset the 8 hours you just spent in your office chair. This is one of the reasons that it’s important to do your ENTIRE warm up and make sure that you put time and energy into your mobility work along with strengthening. The more balanced you are, the easier it is for that muscle group to be “on.”
This is obviously not an inclusive list. Every body is different and therefore every approach to maintaining and improving it should be different. I’m not currently taking patients as I’m on the disabled list recovering from leukemia and a bone marrow transplant but would be more than willing to answer any questions about this newsletter article or debunk other confusing things you’ve heard. Feel free to shoot the coach an email and he’ll get in touch.
Thanks for reading!
About the author:
Dan Ellis graduated with a Doctorate in Physical Therapy from the University of Vermont in 2015. He then spent a year and a half participating in a manual therapy residency through the Institute of Physical Art in Eugene, Oregon. The residency focusses on using a specific hands on approach to get exceptional results. Dan has taken these skills and has successfully applied them to patient’s of all ages, backgrounds, and activity levels. He’s currently recovering from a cancer diagnosis (Casey edit: "Dan just whooped Cancer's ass) but plans to return to taking patients in October of 2022; however he is always open to discussing potential treatment plans and options. He can be a great resource!