After 20-plus years working as a personal trainer and Pilates teacher, I knew the risks of overdoing stretching and rolling out muscles. But during an American Ballet Theater teacher training intensive, I hurt myself halfway through the program due to too much rolling out.
During this intensive, I stayed at my parents’ apartment. They have a fancy massage chair, and it just called to me every night. I was tired and sore from training during the day, so I’d sit in that chair and let it go to town for an hour, during which I primarily focused on releasing my calf muscles.
I knew it was a bit excessive, but wow, did it feel good! I would then proceed to take a long Epsom salt bath before bed. After all, I was physically and mentally tired and didn’t want to be sore from training. Plus, it was such a treat, and I felt I earned it.
But it was just too much release. We were given a beginner ballet class at the end of the week, which wasn’t particularly challenging for me. As we moved off the bars and skipped across the room for part of our center work, boom, my calf seized up, and I couldn’t even walk after that.
I immediately knew that I had caused the problem. I had released my strong legs so much that when my calf muscles had to fire up quickly, they spasmed up because they had gotten too relaxed.
If you have a weakness around a joint, it makes you vulnerable to injury. Your body will cleverly respond by drawing strength from another, stronger muscle. Then, in an attempt to compensate for the weak stabilizers, that muscle will grip in hopes of keeping your body safe from injury.
That wonderful feeling of tension release is satisfying when you massage, roll out, or stretch your tight muscles. But that muscle is gripping for a reason: Your body is protecting you from your weaknesses. So, it is not enough to release bad tension; you then need to reintroduce good tension. The balance between mobility and strength is what functional strength is all about.
The body is always looking for balance; too much tension or too much relaxation leads to problems. This is one of the reasons why a massage, yoga class, or a long stretching session can sometimes end up leaving you feeling tighter or in more pain—or worse, really injured—the next day. Perhaps you felt some temporary relief from the stretching or rolling, but it certainly didn’t solve the root of your issue.
What is a better approach? Is it to avoid stretching altogether?
Of course not. Stretching feels good for a reason, as does massage and foam rolling.
Ideally, you can find a pro who can assess where you are weak and how you are compensating when you move. However, we can’t all find the right person for that assessment. The good news is that you can do a pretty good job of figuring this out for yourself.
First, it’s essential to understand that pain felt in one place can be relieved by releasing tension in another area. For example, many trigger points in the front of your thighs, hip flexors, and glutes will give you much relief in your back. However, if you release those tight areas, you still leave yourself vulnerable to injury, more tightness, or pain if there is not enough stability. So, it is vital that, after you release that excess tension, you reactivate your stabilizing muscles. If you are working on your own, research which muscles help stabilize the area you are working on, and strengthen those muscles after rolling them out.
Let’s say your back is aching, so you stretch your hips and butt and notice immediate relief. However, if you keep releasing tension from your hips and butt, you may end up too “loosey-goosey”—meaning you are nice and loose, but unstable and weak. As a result, your big muscles in the surrounding area will have to grip even more to protect the area.
The best course of action here would be to release those big, gripping muscles by rolling them out and stretching them (in moderation), and then reactivate the stabilizers in the surrounding area. In the case of low-back pain, you would want to do some gentle stabilization exercises such as planks, bird-dogs, and dead bugs.
These exercises help fire up your deep abdominal muscles, pelvic floor, and back muscles. By doing that (in moderation), you tell your body that you no longer need to grip and clench those big muscles to protect your back.
The challenge to approaching this on your own is educating yourself on which muscles work as stabilizers. Typically, they are smaller muscles near the base point of the joint. The other challenge to doing this on your own is understanding proper posture and alignment. Your core and your posture depend on each other. Your internal and external core muscles will support you, no matter what. The question is whether they will maintain your poor posture or enforce a healthy posture.
If you slouch and sit a lot, your shoulders, chest, and hip flexors will get tight and constricted, while your back and glutes will get weaker and weaker. In this case, your core muscles are shaping according to how you hold yourself. Now, imagine training your body with more exercises that round you forward (such as crunches and sit-ups); instead of helping the issue, you would only compound it.
I encourage you to focus on finding good alignment in all that you do.
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