Muscles and Joints

It’s all about balance.  Those guy wires imitate how the muscles work to keep your bones and joints in good placement.  Most muscles are attached to  different bones on each end (like the ropes are attached to the ground and the tree) and when they contract, that action pulls one bone closer to the other. That’s how joints move.  When one muscle shortens, its partner muscle is stretched and a joint moves.

 Take your elbow for example. The muscles that control the elbow in flexion/extension (bending/straightening) are the biceps and triceps. Most of you are familiar with these muscles. The biceps is the muscle in the front part of your upper arm, and the triceps is in the back of the arm. When the biceps contracts and shortens, the arm bends at the elbow and the triceps muscle
 has to stretch. In order for the arm to straighten, the triceps must contract and the biceps must stretch. Every aspect of body mechanics works on this principle of balance between the length/tension relationship of the muscles.

Imagine your muscles like coiled springs. Consider what would happen if the Biceps worked three times more than the triceps. The biceps would become tighter and shorter. It would be tired and weak. The triceps would become stretched and strained and would also become weak. The elbow joint would no longer function properly because the bones of the joint would be pulled toward the shorter spring. If that happens, every time you trim those hedges, there is undue force on that elbow joint because it’s out of balance.

So how does a body get out of balance in muscle tone? What makes on muscle shorter and tighter than its partner? When we go to the gym to exercise and strengthen our muscles, we do that by repeatedly contracting the muscle. This affects the actin and myosin and mitochondria and all the other physiological changes that take place to make that muscle stronger.  We won’t go into all that here but if we don’t stretch the muscle out afterwards, the muscle fibers will stay short. And actually become weaker since a muscle that remains in a  contracted state can no longer move through 100% of its range of motion. It’s lost some leverage and thus it is not as strong as it could be or should be.

 The activities of our daily life contribute to our muscle development just as much as going to the gym or doing a work out. Actually more because we are only “working out” one hour out of the twenty four that we use our muscles in other ways. Those positions we assume repeatedly cause certain muscles to be contracted more frequently than their partner muscles.

Remember The position we assume the most is the position the body conforms to!