[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
[quote]BReddy wrote:
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
hey BBB.
totally unrelated to topic, but I wanted to say THANK YOU! I read a previous post of yours about what could be causing a tight QL (which I was experiencing). Your diagnosis was spot on… I found that not only were my glute med/min weak as hell (clams/x-band walks made me burn like no other), but they were tender as hell when I foam rolled them. I immediately found relief from what was a chronic lower back tightness in my right side as soon as I started working on that glute med/min.[/quote]
Be careful about rolling the glute medius too much. Often times the muscle is weak and overstretched. If you overstretch a muscle long enough it can become strained (hence the tenderness). Although it’s tender, sometimes the last thing you want to do with a strained muscle is beat it up even more.
Also, when a muscle is overstretched that means it’s likely too relaxed as it’s not tightening up and contracting like it should be. Often times rolling is used to relax the muscle…the last thing you want to do is relax an already relaxed muscle even more. [/quote]
I think I agree with what you are saying - if we can sort out some of the terminology, lol.
You say ‘overstretched’ and I say ‘lengthened’. You see to me, and overstretched mycle is, by definition, strained. That is the mechanism of injury, i.e., taking an active, firing muscle past it’s end point and having that cause damage to the muscle.
…Which is different from a ‘lengthened’ muscle, with is (In my world, lol) a muscle that due to postural issues, has been held, non-contracted, in a longer position than is optimal (WRT the length/tension relationship) and has over time become long and weak (as opposed to short and/or tight).
Whilst I agree with you that a strained muscle should not be rolled, that only really applies (IMO) to a muscle that has a hematoma or overt inflammation or pain. A strained muscle that is not still in the acute stage of reaction, usually benefits from rolling, due to the breakdown of scar tissue.
And whilst rolling is done to hypertonic muscles to relax (detonify) them, it’s not actually all that good a technique for that, METS being better.
So rolling a ‘relaxed’ muscle is not a common activity (because the user doesn’t usually target muscles that are not percieved as tight or sore) and even so, since a relaxed muscle (as opposed to a weak or lengthened muscle) is simply oe that is normotonic, there should be no issues rolling it. It will neither benefit nor harm the muscles’ tonicity.
And if by ‘relaxed’ you mean a weak muscle, well then depending on the cause of that weakness, the rolling may be beneficial, but certainly shouldn’t harm it. Perhaps the muscle is weak due to internal scarring and adhesions, in which case the application of rolling might well be beneficial to that muscle.
Just my opinion though 
BBB[/quote]
Sorry I didn’t see this.
Pretty sure we are on the same page, like you said little differences in the terminology, but I wasn’t really consistent. When I said overstretched above I meant chronically lengthened, and thus the muscle, over time, becomes strained. This oopposed to a traumatic overstretching resulting in a strain.
I agree that typically METS is better than rolling, as anything with the hands is going to be much more focal and efficient.
I will say though that I see people desiring to have massage type work done on lengthened muscles due to the muscles giving the client a perceived tightness. This is when actually the muscle is chronically lengthened. That is, you typically don’t notice a muscle is tight until it is stretched.
I’ve seen other people talk about a muscle being weak due to scarring and adhesions but can’t say I’ve really seen this myself. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s not happening though. Any examples of this you could share?
