Small muscle chains move our fingers, turn our heads, and bend our knees. Large chains go from our toes to our fingertips. When it comes to maintaining a youthful feeling in our body and remaining free of pain, all chains—large and small—are equally important.
In what I call a balanced body, all of the 620 muscles are equally strong and flexible. But muscle chains can be broken or interrupted in several ways. When a chain is broken, only the sides that the muscles are pulling are activated; the muscles on the other side cannot move. The consequences of broken muscle chains can be very severe, leading to stiffness and eventually atrophy on the side that is not being pulled.
Common causes of an interruption of the flow of signals in a muscle chain include
•scar tissue from surgery
•large bruises
•broken bones
•torn or injured muscles, ligaments, or tendons
•sprains and strains
•back pain
•sciatica
•shin splints
Sometimes the flow of information is completely severed, as in a spinal cord injury or a cut tendon, and sometimes it is partially interrupted. As we discussed in Chapter 4, sometimes overbuilding certain muscle groups can create imbalances in which certain muscles overpower others, resulting in atrophy of the weaker muscles.
Lower body blockages. I see this a great deal with professional hockey players and Olympic skiers, whose hamstrings, glutes, and quads are so tight that their calf muscles can’t move. This condition leads to groin injuries, as the chains connecting the groin muscles are unable to move efficiently. The rigid hamstrings block the chain that flows into the groin muscles, resulting in extremely tight, often pulled groin muscles.
The feet and ankles are the starting point of a major chain that goes from toes to fingers. When the ankle joints are tight or weak, there is little to no mobility in the ankles. This affects the mechanics of how we walk and how much energy we have available. Stiffness in the ankles causes tension in the calf muscles. That tension causes tension in the quadriceps, which then causes compression of the knee joints and leads to pain. Any weakness or lack of mobility will spread far and wide, causing problems in parts of the body that are seemingly unrelated to the original source of the weakness. Foot weakness can cause back pain—such is the nature of muscle chains.
Upper body blockages. Blockages of upper body muscle chains are particularly common in athletes who focus excessively on the trapezius and deltoid muscles, which in turn force the shoulders into a rounded position. The disproportionately stronger back muscles overpower the muscles of the chest, creating an imbalance in the chain that leads to poor posture and injury.
Mid-body blockages. When hip or back muscles are tight, they will often block the chains of muscles that are either above or below them. If we do not do large, full-body movements to keep these large chains strong and flexible, the result will be problems like back pain, poor posture, drooping shoulders, tight legs, and difficulty sitting down in or standing up from a chair.
When the large chains have been broken, either by lack of flexibility or by an injury, they always cause imbalances that lead to pain. These imbalances are manifested as poor posture, back pain, arthritis, and injuries. Full-body rebalancing workouts that include equal amounts of strengthening and flexibility movement are important to keep us pain-free, fully mobile, and feeling young.
Now that we have a sense of what’s at stake, let’s look at how we can increase our flexibility.
HOW ESSENTRICS INCREASES FLEXIBILITY
We can think of the whole body as a collection of functional groups of muscles, with those in each group having equal but opposing actions. Our muscles are arranged in specific groups, and within each group, in opposing pairs. When one muscle contracts and shortens, the opposing muscle relaxes and lengthens. For example, one group of muscles lifts your leg while the opposite group of muscles releases the leg to be lifted. Together, their actions work in harmony and, ideally, the degree of contraction in the working muscle should be equal to the degree of elongation in the opposing muscle. In ESSENTRICS, our muscles constantly alternate between contraction and elongation, so the muscle groups being used become equally stretched and strengthened.
Stretching, by definition, is about increasing the distance between two joints by gently pulling them apart using their adjoining muscles. Static stretches do this by isolating and stretching one set of muscles, such as the hamstrings, and do not include the surrounding muscles, such as those that run alongside the upper thigh to join at the hip. But in real life, if you move your leg, you use every one of those muscles. If those other muscles are not stretched adequately, you could stretch the hamstring all day and it wouldn’t make you feel any more flexible. Your range of motion will always be determined by your least flexible muscle.
That’s why, in ESSENTRICS, we use eccentric force on all of the muscles that surround the joint to help pull it apart. Those muscles could be long, short, flat, wide, irregular, or even triangular. But in order to make the stretch effective, they all have to be involved in the stretch.
The arrangement of the muscles around the joint dictates the direction in which we pull. For example, the knee, which is a hinge joint, swings forward and backward. The muscles on both sides of the knee hinge—the hamstrings and the quadriceps—create both forward and backward phases of the swinging motion, and both need to be equally strong and flexible so the knee can remain balanced. This ESSENTRICS approach to full-body balance has several additional benefits:
Helps broaden range of motion within each joint. While we stretch, we also rotate the joint in the middle of the stretch. By doing this rotation movement while we stretch, we activate any surrounding muscles that tend to get ignored in standard static stretching. This activation balances the joint and helps relieve pain.
Helps strengthen functional exercise skills. Throughout the exercises, we try to mirror the constant body movements that we use in real life, whether we’re reaching for things on a high shelf, twisting to wave to a friend behind us, or bending down to pick up a child or a heavy bag of groceries. We do this not merely to help you do your chores more effectively; we also know that these types of everyday activities engage muscles that isolated stretches tend to miss.
Helps strengthen the mind-body connection. The exercises in ESSENTRICS are designed to follow the natural chains of the muscles in continuous circular and rotational movements. Following the natural chains of the muscles feels easy and soothing, in sync with the body’s instinctive flow. The organic nature of these movements leaves you with a sense of well-being. The movements seem to be in harmony with what your body instinctively wants to do and how it wants to move. At the end of an ESSENTRICS workout, you will be likely to feel relaxed and contented, even though you’ve just finished a rigorous activity.
Helps strengthen the weakest links in our body. Of course, the fitness gained from following the muscle chains is as valuable as the emotional benefit. If one muscle along the chain is weaker, tighter, or in any way off balance relative to the others, all of the muscles along the chain will be affected. That’s why a foot injury can cause hip problems, or an arm injury can cause shoulder problems. In order to operate at our peak, we must rebalance the entire body.
HOW TO ASSESS YOUR OWN FLEXIBILITY
When starting ESSENTRICS, most people want to know how flexible they can become. No matter what, everybody has the ability to gain some degree of flexibility. That said, no two people are alike—if you’ve never in your life been able to touch your toes, you’re not likely to suddenly be able to fold yourself into a pretzel. Working from an original starting point, the average person can gain between 60 and 75 percent additional flexibility and contract the muscles an additional 25 percent by following a program like ESSENTRICS.
What we call a “muscle” is really two things:
1.The actual skeletal muscle organ, which is made up of millions of filaments of protein str
ands bundled together (which turn the mitochondria fuel ATP into energy)
2.Tendons that are made of fibrous connective tissue, which attaches the muscles to the bones.
You can’t judge your muscles’ potential flexibility on the basis of a standard flexibility test—everyone has a different potential. The differences between you and other people will be mainly due to the ratio of your skeletal muscle to tendon.
Tendons are very stiff while muscles are very supple. The skeletal muscle has the ability to contract roughly 25 percent, as it is strengthened, and extend roughly 60 to 75 percent, as it is elongated or stretched. Tendons, by contrast, are made of fibrous connective tissue and have a limited flexibility range (between 4 and 6 percent, as we discussed in Chapter 4).
We train all our instructors to assess a person’s potential flexibility by using a measure we call “best resting.” Best resting is the neutral point just at the start of movement. Once you begin to move, your muscles will start to contract or lengthen, indicating your neutral or resting level of flexibility prior to any significant exercise.
In judging potential flexibility, one thing we think about is the ratio of tendon length to muscle length. Some people have a lower tendon-to-muscle ratio than others. The longer your muscle is in relation to the length of your tendons, the greater your degree of potential flexibility. If you have very limited range of motion, you can assume that your tendons are longer and your muscles are shorter. If this sounds like you, you may never achieve great flexibility, but you can still improve your flexibility dramatically. And if you show a significant range of motion at your best resting position, then you can assume that your tendon-to-muscle ratio is low and that you will see very impressive changes in your flexibility by following the ESSENTRICS exercises.
Best resting depends on several factors, including your
•genetic profile
•age
•level of fitness
•ratio of tendon length to muscle length
•type of previous training
Sadly, no amount of flexibility training can change the reality of a high tendon-to-muscle ratio. You may not be able to become a gymnast or a ballerina, but you absolutely can achieve your own maximum flexibility. Everyone experiences an increased range of motion—from significant to downright astonishing—after doing these exercises for a couple of months.
Sometimes our stiffness, pain, or lack of flexibility is due not to our muscles or tendons, but to our fascia. Luckily, ESSENTRICS can help there, too.
USING ESSENTRICS TO READJUST FASCIA
We talked about fascia, one part of what I call the “oily bath,” in Chapter 4. One of the most exciting side benefits of this exercise program is how well it can help to readjust fascia that is out of place.
We have two kinds of fascia, superficial and deep, which can vary in thickness and size. Sometimes fascia is described as a type of cellophane sleeve that’s made up of flexible collagen tissue and fat. Fascia surrounds individual muscle fibers as well as whole muscle groups, such as the back of the neck into the shoulders, or the quadriceps into the lower back, that hold and support everything in its place. One of the largest fascia coverings in the body is described as “trousers” that cross over the knee and finish above the hips. These fascia “trousers” are thicker around the knee, thin out as they continue up the leg and hips, and then thicken again near the pelvis.
Picture what happens when you put on a sweater and the sleeve is twisted around your arm—uncomfortable, right? You wriggle and twist the cloth around your arm, and you typically can’t focus on anything else until the sweater is positioned correctly. Well, fascia is often called the “sleeve” of the muscle, and it can also become twisted, pinching the muscles and causing inflammation and pain.
We often can’t tell the difference between fascia pain and muscle injury, as in the case of chronic back pain or knee pain. Fascia is also the entry point of many nerves, and this factor heightens the potential for pain. Typical pain relief measures, such as heat, cold, and even painkillers, won’t work—only straightening the fascia will stop the pinching and relieve the pain.
ESSENTRICS’ techniques use movement within a stretch and rotation of a joint to help straighten out the twisted fascia. Sometimes all it takes is a few simple rotations of the joint to reposition the fascia correctly. When the fascia is straightened out, the pinching stops and the pain disappears.
One exception occurs when the fascia has become traumatized by injury, and develops scarring. But scarring isn’t confined to acute injuries. We all develop multiple small and large scars and adhesions throughout our body, accumulating them as we go through life. Their buildup can contribute to our sense of feeling older. Luckily, gentle exercise can help us there, too.
HEALING SCAR TISSUE
When we think of scar tissue, we think of scars on the surface of our skin that we see with our naked eye, not internal scars. But most of us have more internal than external scars, as a result of the bumps, bruises, or surgeries that we experienced over many years of life. The accumulation of these scars is part of what determines our pace of aging, as it can lead to restricted movement, muscle imbalance (when we “baby” an injury), and general stiffness and chronic pain of all kinds.
Scars are the seams created to bind together two cut parts of soft tissue in order to stop bleeding. Whether the bleeding is on the surface of our skin or internal, any bleeding has to be cauterized to stop the flow of blood; the resulting seam is called a scar. What we in the antiaging business need to recognize is that scar tissue is a type of atrophied cell.
Everyone is familiar with what a cut looks like; we’ve all seen red blood flow out of a wound, usually followed by a clear whitish fluid. This white fluid is actually a part of our immune system that is sent to wounded areas; within minutes, the fluid crystallizes, forming a scab, which stops the bleeding. The scab looks like an ugly, brownish mound and eventually falls off, leaving behind a thin pale scar.
In order to understand how a scar interferes with the mobility of the body, we need to understand how the fibers of the body work. The fibers of body tissue run in the same direction as one another, like the threads in a piece of cloth. If you pulled a piece of cloth, it would unravel along the lines of the threads. Imagine that you sewed a thick, heavy seam (the scar) across the lines of the fabric, and then pulled on a thread: Only those threads on the side of the seam that you were pulling on would move. The threads on the other side of the seam would be blocked and immobilized by the seam.
Your body tissue works in much the same way. When you have a scar, it interferes with the movement of the muscle or skin tissue. When you pull one side, as when you lift your arm above your head, the other side won’t move—a scar blocks the connection between the two sides, even interrupting major muscle chains throughout the body. The degree of interference corresponds to the size of the scar.
Soft body tissue, like skin and muscles, is made of cells that form hundreds of tissue-paper-thin layers lying on top of one another, giving the appearance of one solid, thick layer. In operations, when surgeons cut through the skin, they are in fact cutting through hundreds of individual layers of cells. Each layer is kept separate from the layer above by a lubricating fluid that prevents layers from being glued together.
The human body is very efficient in dealing with damage; it has the world’s best triage unit. When we are cut, white blood cells rush to the rescue with one objective in mind: Stop the bleeding! And it’s a good thing, since any cut or wound gives outside germs and bacteria easy access to the vital organs of the body through the bloodstream.
In order to seal a wound as rapidly as possible, the immune system goes into intense action, slapping on the white blood corpuscles in an attempt to stop the bleeding. The body does not try to make a perfect job of it—the only objective is to stop the bleeding. Anytime the skin is broken, whether by accident or surgery, scar tissue forms to seal the cut and bind together the spliced l
ayers of skin or muscle. In the process, as a side effect, thousands of skin layers become glued together. The result of binding layers together is to give the skin a puckered appearance. This also leads to restricted movement between the two sides of the scar. Physical therapy is recommended to prevent the skin layers from remaining glued together, and it has to be done in the weeks immediately following surgery. But many people don’t realize the importance of this part of healing and some ignore their doctors’ orders. (I should know, as I am guilty of ignoring my own doctor’s advice, and now I have an immobile scar on my wrist!) This is why scar tissue leaves us with less range of motion and less mobility both on the surface and internally.
Interior ripping and tearing happen from time to time during life. A bruise is a sign of internal bleeding. The process of healing a bruise is identical to that of healing a surface cut: White blood cells rush to the rescue, binding the wound and leaving behind a stiffened, albeit healed, wound. The bruise is created from the blood that escaped before the wound was sealed.
We all suffer hundreds of micro tears, cuts, and bruises over the years of our lives; we bump into a desk, trip on an uneseen object, slice our finger while cooking, take a bad fall while playing a sport. Minor accidents are unavoidable, but with each bump and bruise we develop a new scar. We accumulate quite a few scars over the course of our lives, and if we don’t get rid of excess scar tissue we will become extremely stiff. Exercise helps make that scar tissue flexible again.
Some of the best exercises to get rid of scar tissue are slow, sensuous movements that mimic the body, such as cat arches or ceiling reaches. These movements are deceptively simple—we don’t need a personal trainer to show us how to do them, but we do need to take the time to stretch slowly and regularly to get the maximum benefit.
Aging Backwards_10 Years Lighter and 10 Years Younger in 30 Minutes a Day Page 8