Muscle imbalance – how it arises and how to retrain it
What muscle imbalance is is quite clear from the name itself. This is a state of a certain imbalance in muscle involvement, that is, some muscles work more than they should, others work less. And so a situation arises when, on the one hand, our muscles are overloaded and shortened, and on the other hand, our muscles are weakened, so much so that it is difficult to activate them at all. And this terrain of muscle imbalance leads to poor posture, back pain, joint pain and, in the long term, premature joint degeneration, disc herniation, etc.
Cause of muscle imbalance
Often patients come to our offices who almost apologize from the door, that they know that the problems are caused by the fact that they do not have abdominal or interscapular muscles, or that they are shortened and that they know that they should exercise. But we are usually not so much responsible for our muscle imbalance. Ideally, our muscle balance should be automatic, so we should not have the need to maintain it. But that’s not the case with most of us. The management of muscle work was not ideally established right at the beginning and so we have been dragging it with our imbalance since the first months of life. Then we sat down at school and again the conditions for worse posture deepened. And then all it takes is an injury, surgery, study, one-sided sport and all this sends us into deeper imbalances.That’s why we don’t have complete control over our muscle imbalance, unless we spend the whole day in constant checking to see if we’ve stooped a little, or pushed our heads forward, or pulled our shoulders to our ears. And you just can’t.
So if we want to work on our muscle imbalance, we can’t just mechanically stretch the muscles and strengthen the weakened ones in isolation (it will help a little, but we will have to compensate in this way all the time). We have to change the program in that computer that controls it all, and that’s our brain. Well, and we get to the brain again through the body. So it is necessary to practice a little differently. You need to practice with experience, practice with conscious monitoring of your body, watch the little things that will do the huge work. When the perception of our body improves, or when the brain receives better and more detailed information from the body, it will also have a better overview of it and thus it will work with it better and, most importantly, automatically!
Group lessons led by physiotherapists at Be Balanced
Our group exercises are built on these principles. We are not only interested in exercising, but mainly in transferring your attention to your body. To be able to notice when the joint is tightening, when the tissues are pinched or overloaded, and when they are on the contrary healthily engaged, stretched and when they are equal to the old blockages. And with this self-discovery work, you are fine-tuning your control system, which will very willingly reward you with good coordination, muscle balance and correct posture.
Skupinové lekce, individuální tréninky a aktivity pro dospělé a děti v Be Balanced, Praha 6