Five Easy Stretches to Release Tight Muscles Joint Pain and Stiffness

Five Easy Stretches to Release Tight Muscles, Joint Pain and Stiffness
By Julie Donnelly, LMT

Low back pain…wrist pain…numbness in your fingers…pain in your knees or ankles… tennis elbow. Each of these conditions can be the end result of muscle spasms! 

While it seems incredible that a simple thing like a spasm can cause so much trouble, it’s easy to understand when you take a close look at the body.  There are 600 muscles in the body and 206 bones. The only reason a joint moves is because muscles pull on it, and therein lays the problem. The muscle originates on one bone, crosses over a joint and inserts onto another bone.  When a muscle contracts it pulls the insertion point toward the origination point, and the joint bends. To demonstrate this let’s look at how the wrist and hand move. If you tightly grip your forearm while you are making the following movements, you will feel the muscles contract, and you will easily understand the concept.

The flexor (underside of your forearm) and the extensor (top of your forearm) muscles originate at the elbow, and insert into the wrist, hand and fingers. If your hand is straight out and you bend your wrist or curl your fingers into a fist, you can feel the flexor muscles contract. At the same time, in order for your hand, or fingers, to completely bend, the extensor muscles must fully stretch.

To straighten your hand, or fingers, the extensor muscles must shorten and the flexor muscles must fully stretch. If, for example, the extensor muscles are shortened by a spasm, it’s like having a metal strap attached to the top of your fingers, you lose the flexibility of the joints, and you will only be able to bend your hand, and fingers, as far as the extensors will stretch.  The inability to bend their fingers or wrist makes many people think that they have arthritis or some other joint condition, while the problem is actually less serious than it appears. In this case, the odds are that you are suffering from a repetitive strain injury of the muscles of the forearm.

I teach my clients an analogy that I think is very helpful in understanding the root of the repetitive strain injury situation.  Imagine a young child standing between a deep well filled with water, and a big rain barrel.  The child has an eyedropper and is going from the well to the rain barrel putting tiny amounts on water into the barrel, many times back and forth, for hours every day.

Then, about 40 years later, the rain barrel overflows. The child (who is now an adult) says "I don’t understand, I’ve been doing this for years and it’s never done this before!"   Likewise, people say to me: "I’ve been doing this (movement, exercise, etc.) for years and it never hurt before, I must be getting old."  No, you’re not getting old, you just never emptied your "rain barrel" and now it overflowed! Muscle action creates a by-product chemical called lactic acid, which remains in the muscle fibers. Our body has the ability to flush out this toxin, but not to the level that we are producing it, and so our muscle “overflows.” However, excess lactic acid causes our muscles to go into a spasm, which is very much like a knot within the fibers.

The body is amazing. We have mechanisms for healing that are so incredible that science still hasn’t been able to fully understand how they work.  Our bodies mutate very slowly, but life is now changing rapidly.  It wasn’t such a long time ago, before electricity was discovered, that people would work very hard all day and then rest when the sun went down, going to bed early. This quiet time would give their body the opportunity to flush out the built-up lactic acid from the muscles; toxins which had accumulated during the work of the day. This is the body’s method of emptying the rain barrel.

But, when electricity increased the hours in our day, we began to tax our muscles by working out in gyms, staying on the computer until late at night, and even doing fun things like dancing until the wee hours. Our bodies weren’t able to keep up with the increased lactic acid production, and we began to pile up spasms one on top of the other.  The build-up continued day after day, and our muscles started getting tighter and tighter.

This situation leads to the next analogy that I share with my clients. Remember that muscles originate in one place, cross over the joint and then insert in another place. Muscles always pull on the insertion point. Now, visualize pulling your hair at the end. You don’t feel it at the end where you are pulling, but you do feel it on the scalp where it inserts.  Likewise, you rarely feel the pain in the part of the muscle that is being pulled, but you do feel it at the insertion. Going back to the flexors and extensors, pain is often felt at the wrist (where both of these muscles insert) even though the spasm is actually further up the arm in the bulk of the muscle. Since the pain is at the wrist you think you have a condition of the wrist, but you actually have a muscle spasm in the forearm muscles.  This fact has been proven by hundreds of clients who have come into our office.

Another important cause of chronic joint pain is most people don’t stretch their muscles enough!  We go to gyms, and we work out with trainers or by ourselves.  We contract our muscles, strengthen our muscles, and in general do everything we can think about to build up our muscles.  But, we don’t stretch.

An Easy Stretching Routine
I’d like to share with you a simple stretching program that is both beneficial and easy.  Stand up, or sit in an armless chair if standing is too difficult, giving yourself plenty of room to swing your arms freely in all directions.  Now, think of yourself as a large stick of cold taffy that needs to be softened. Did you ever play with taffy when you were a child?  Remember how you gently played with it, warming it, and eventually it became easy to stretch it all the way out? That’s what you want to do with your body, slowly start to swing each joint, one at a time, never going beyond what is comfortable.  These stretches must always feel good, never being forced.

• Begin to gently swing your arms while you slowly turn your head side to side.

• Rotate your hips like your doing a Hawaiian hula. 

• Lift and drop your shoulders. 

• Hold onto a chair and swing your leg back and forth.

• Rotate your foot in all directions to stretch the muscle crossing your ankle.

Do anything you can think of to move all your joints in a free and easy manner. This is a relaxing stretch, there should be no pain just the feeling of the muscle and joint gradually stretching easily.  If you feel a sharp pain anyplace - STOP! If it feels good you’re doing fine.  As you do it every day you’ll discover new moves that feel wonderful to you. 

Muscle spasms truly are a major cause of chronic pain. Release the muscle spasms, lengthen the muscles, bring nourishment to the muscle fibers, and joint pain disappears!  Repetitive strain of the muscles means that it will re-occur; you can be ready by learning just a few easy to do techniques and stretches. You don’t need to be held down by joint pain, nor do you need to find someone to treat your pain.

"The best therapist is you!"

About the Author:
Julie Donnelly is a licensed massage therapist specializing in the treatment of chronic pain and sports injuries. She has co-authored several self-treatment books, including “The Pain-Free Triathlete” and “Carpal Tunnel Syndrome-What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You.” She teaches Julstro self-treatment workshops nationwide and is a frequent presenter at Conventions and Seminars.