Your Body. Your Responsibility.

This is the perfect lockdown blog. You’re likely cooped up in your house, more sedentary than usual, tight and achey with spare time on your hands. Perfect recipe to take back control over your body.

How much do you know about your own body? The answer from most people would be staggeringly little. This blog excites me and it should excite you. I’m about to let you in on a little secret - you can fix yourself! All you will need is some floor space, a foam roller and a massage ball (cricket, baseball, lacrosse ball, golf ball, spikey massage ball - whatever…hard and round)

As an Osteopath it’s easy to lose sight of how little body awareness people have with regard to how or what they’re feeling and when. Osteopath’s tend to be hyper aware of areas of tightness, discomfort and asymmetry and assume that other people are the same.

My experience as an Osteopath has shown me that most people rely on health practitioners to tell them what the source of their pain is, what has caused it and how to fix it. Luckily, we’re very good at doing this. We do this largely through hands on manual therapy (soft tissue massage, stretching, joint manipulation, dry needling, myo-fascial cupping) with the goals of reducing muscle tension, increasing joint mobility, decreasing pain and educating you on postural and movement mechanics.

BUT in this time of lockdown, when your usual practitioner isn’t there to help rescue you from the pain pit wouldn’t you like to be able to identify areas of restriction and pain and figure out how to stretch, massage and mobilise these areas yourself?

This gives you so much more agency over your own body. The locus of control is internal not external. It’s a powerful concept.

So the first key principle is awareness. You need to figure out where you’re feeling the pain. Is it left/right sided? Central or both sides? Is it sharp and stabbing/grabbing in nature or is it dull and achey. The main takeaways from this blog are principle based, rather than technique focused. I’m not trying to outline every possible tool and technique you can use to rid yourself of pain, but to emphasise the process of self awareness, experimentation and retesting.

Next is to start poking around the area of pain. What parts feel tender to touch? Which feel ropey and tight and which feel soft and supple. Which movements feel okay and which bring on the pain. You can learn so much by mindfully experimenting.

If you can identify tight, ropey, tender spots you can safely assume that tissue is under excess load and is not coping with the demands. If you push on that spot and it reproduces the pain you’ve been feeling, even better - you’ve likely identified the tissue causing your symptoms and you’re on the right track to solving the problem. If a certain activity/movement brings on the pain - good - you now know what aggravates it.

You can start by massaging that tight, tender spot with your massage ball. Either leaning against a wall on laying on the floor. Try and find the sorest spots and fix on that position and take a few breaths. Feel the pain decrease slightly and the tension reduce. Then you can try slowly and deeply rolling over tight bands. This should hurt - A LOT. Work through the tight spot for a couple of minutes. Now perform the activity/movement that was aggravating it. Does it feel better? If so, good. If not, time to move on to the next thing.

Next part - try stretching that area and the surrounding areas out. For example if you’re feeling hip pain try stretching the muscles around the hip. Do a standing quad stretch. Feel the difference between left and right. Is one tighter than the other? Does one feel nice and the other one feel painful. Now stretch your hip flexors in a lunge stretch (either standing or kneeling), then your glute muscles while laying on the your back.

They key here is to pay attention. You may find that your glutes are really tight and the stretch is quite uncomfortable. You might find that the left one feels worse than the right and it’s even hard to get into the right position. Good. They need more work.

At this point you may be thinking - “I don’t know how to stretch out every muscle of my body”. That’s okay, we have a great bank of stretches and self massage techniques on our instagram (@osteopathicmovement). Or you can go online and google whole body stretch routines and go through the list.

Another common question is how long should I hold each stretch? How many times and how often? The general guideline would be to hold each stretch for 30 seconds, 3 times, once to twice per day. That’s a good jump off point but what I want you to focus on is your what YOUR body needs.

If your left glutes are tighter than your right, stretch them more often. Try holding the stretch for 45 seconds instead of 30. The aim is to restore healthy range of motion and symmetry with the “good” side.

These principles you can use throughout your whole body, for every kind of ache and pain. Find the sore spots. Massage and stretch them. Does it feel better? Yes - keep it up. No? Does it feel worse? That’s okay, maybe you over did it. Do less.

If you’re in severe, sharp, acute pain the best thing to do is to find yourself a relatively comfortable position and introduce slight, gentle rocking motions. The aim here is to reintroduce motion back into a joint that has been locked up. You must do this carefully and gently. The aim is to tell your nervous system that you can move this joint safely and it’s not a threat of further damage. If you try and push through the pain with strong stretches, you’re sending your nervous system the opposite message - this is painful, we can’t do this motion safely and your nervous system will respond with more muscle spasming and inflammation.

One example of this is acute low back pain. Lay on your back with your knees bent in a relatively comfortable position. Take some deep breaths. Then start gently rocking your knees side to side in a small, pain free range. Over time this will loosen up and you’ll be able to rock the knees further and further. Remember, the key is to do this gently and allow the body to let go of the tension voluntarily, not to force it.

If the pain is in your neck, turn your head gently in each direction, only as far as you can without sharp pain. Rotate left and right, look down and up, tilt your head left and right. If you can only move 1cm thats fine. Don’t push it. The more you do it the more it’ll loosen up and let off.

Once you’re out of this acute phase of sharp pain you can start applying the above techniques of soft tissue massage with a ball and stretches.

Over time you’ll get to know your areas of tightness and the correlation between these restrictions and your common pain presentations. For example, when my low back tightens up I know it’s because my right hip flexors and left glutes have become tight again. I stretch them out and do some massage ball work through my low back and I’m back up and running.

Thank you for your attention. This is a long blog. If you have any more specific questions about stretches of massage techniques please feel free to contact me by email at: info@osteopathicmovement.com

Have fun!