Why do my muscles feel so stiff?

Do you ever feel stiff when standing up from seated? Do normally easy actions now produce aches and pains? Tightness and stiffness aren’t just due to ageing that’s only part of the story. Compression, dehydration and inactivity can trigger whats know as adhesion. For instance when fibrous connective tissue becomes dehydrated, the fascial layers that are supposed to glide smoothly start to stick and drag. What this means for your muscles is that the muscles strands get stuck together and hey presto – you feel tight.

A daily walk doesn’t demand that these muscle groups separate very much – that’s why a gentle daily yoga practice is so beneficial. Long periods of sitting day after day with only minimal walking breaks for exercise will lead to the fascial layers getting stuck together. When you finally experiment with a forward bend or hamstring stretch, the muscles feel tight and not very responsive to stretch.

While being able to do the splits is not especially useful, being able to reach down to tie your shoelaces certainly is. So what can we do? Firstly, make sure you drink 8 glasses (8 ounce) of water a day. When your body doesn’t get enough water through the day it starts to draw on other sources like the skin and internal organs.

Secondly, try to incorporate gentle stretching into your day everyday and get those muscle strands moving. You can join me on You Tube or find a local class.  The University of Arizona has proven that a low intensity stretch held for at least 3 minutes but often as long as 5 minutes, causes a release of cellular messengers that improve the body’s flexibility.

Here’s an example of a yoga posture that’s low intensity, very good for the spine, chest and shoulders above: