Are your weak neck muscles making your legs tight? Here is a point of view you may not have heard before.

Are your weak neck muscles making your legs tight? Here is a point of view you may not have heard before.

When you feel tight, the immediate thought is that the area needs to be stretched. Have you ever asked yourself why you are tight and why your body is constantly tight, while other people just wake up and go without a problem?

I had this conversation this morning with a patient who is a professional jazz drummer, who was not aware that tightness was not normal and is not necessarily from what he does for a living. I asked him, do all the drummers have your problem with a weak right arm and tightness? He thought for a moment and realized that most of them do not experience what he experiences, which changed the conversation to what may be different about his body.

Most people are used to feeling a certain way from an early age, and never question what is normal or abnormal until they are tight or in pain. The truth is, there is no normal and what feels tight may actually be straining and when stretched, feels worse rather than better.

This is why out of the box thinking when it comes to pain is essential to figuring out why you hurt, or why you are tight. When a person has a complaint, and the complaint returns, it is important for us to ask why are rethink what we did to relieve it last time, since we obviously got it wrong.

Here is a big out of the box idea I thought would be great to share with you regarding movement patterns and compensations. When your hamstrings are tight, can it be weak neck muscles. While the post is logical, one must ask why are the neck muscles weak.

Are Your Weak Neck Muscles Making Your Hamstrings Tight?

To generate power, you need mobility. To have mobility, you need stability. Proximal stability feeds distal mobility. Instability signals the brain and nervous system to put the brakes on power output because it feels threatened. A lack of stability is a threat to your nervous system.

The brain is in control of the gas pedal and it controls how much juice it puts into a muscle. It will inhibit (neural down regulate) one muscle in a pattern and facilitate (neural up regulate) another in an attempt to gain stability. It robs Peter to pay Paul.

The brain is a lazy piece of meat and it does not like to work hard. It cheats and takes the easy way out every chance it gets. When dysfunctional movement patterns exist, the brain will simply choose an easier alternate path to accomplishing a given task.

The Neck Is Connected to the Hamstrings

For example, if the deep core stabilizing system of your body is unstable, your nervous system will simply recruit more superficial power amplifiers to take over. One of the most common relationships is inhibition (weakness) of the deep neck flexors to facilitation (tightness) in the hamstrings.

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