By in Joints & Muscles

Muscle Spasms and Cramps

Muscle pain is often underestimated and that intense pains are often blamed on other tissues that aren’t necessarily involved.

Muscle guarding can also contribute to the suffering of people with other conditions. In the sense that a proportion of their pain is actually due to their issue but another proportion of pain is down to the muscle tension created by guarding the original issue.

I’m sure it is not a leap to understand that muscles only have a certain amount of tolerance for contraction. We can only lift a weight a certain number of repetitions. We can lift more repetitions of lighter weight and fewer reps of a heavier weight but the muscle still fatigues at some point and starts to get uncomfortable.

Carrying tension in our muscles is normal. Muscles hold our bodies upright and our heads in a position to look at the computer screen or drive the car, but they have a limited tolerance to doing this, as in, at some stage, they tire out and become sore. Some muscles have better tolerance to certain activities than others but all will fatigue at some point.

So whether it is the number of repetitions at the gym or how long we sit at the desk or in the driving seat, muscles can cause us all pain and not just when they are injured.

Tight, tense, knotty and crampy are all words we might use to describe the discomfort and pain that we recognise in muscles but sharp might not be so commonly used yet I think I often see people complaining of very sharp pain where the contribution can only be muscular and there is no trauma involved. It just developed.

If you feel that your pain could be muscular then get in touch with The Body Matters and see what treatments we can offer to help you get out of pain.

Sports Massage therapy is designed to reduce muscle tension and assist in correcting problems and imbalances in the soft tissue that can be caused by repetitive and strenuous physical activity and trauma. Specialised techniques are used to stimulate muscle recovery and repair, enhance movement and increase the range of motion.

Louise