Massage Therapy Sarasota | Flexible Athlete Sports Massage

Regardless of the sport you enjoy, the repetitive motions involved will cause your muscles to tighten and ultimately you may suffer from an injury that keeps you out of the game.  The problem is the spasms are shortening the muscle, but since the muscle is still attached to a bone (usually at a joint) on either end, it puts a severe strain on the joint. The tension keeps getting worse, and you’re busy playing your sport so you don’t pay attention to the warning signs.

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Or maybe you do notice that you’re not able to move as easily as you want so you decide to stretch. This could make the problem a lot worse, even though it feels better for a few minutes.

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Let’s take a look at this analogy, and for simplicity  in explaining the sports injury, consider your hamstrings.

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If you tied a rope to a large tree, and then tied the other end around a small flexible tree, you can easily see how pulling on the rope will make the small tree bend.

 

Compare this to a muscle (the rope) that originates on a stationary bone (for example your pelvis) and inserts into a moveable bone (for example, the back of your knee).  Now think that the muscle is your hamstrings. When your hamstrings contract you will bend your knee. You do this thousands of times when you are running, cycling, or many other sports.

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You can imagine the result if there were knots in the rope, holding the flexible tree bent over, and you tried to push the small tree up straight.

 

The same thing happens to your hamstrings (and every other muscle) when you try to stretch them without first releasing the spasms caused by the repetitive motion.

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As your hamstrings shorten from the repetitive motion of bending your knee, it puts a strain on the posterior pelvis, and you feel burning at the very top of your leg. It is also putting a strain on your posterior knee every time you try to straighten your leg.

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You can feel that your hamstrings are tight, so you decide to stretch. DON’T as this will only make the spasms tight and put more of a strain on your pelvis and posterior knee. Serious sports injuries occur when a muscle that is shortened by spasms is stretched.

 

You can prevent sports injuries by being proactive in releasing spasms as a part of your regular exercise routine, and then safely stretching.