If you feel stiff in certain places on your body, you are certainly not alone. Muscle tightness and stiffness is not just an ailment that affects professional athletes. It is something that can impact any person at any time. In fact, you might not even notice what you did to create so much tightness. The feeling can come on unexpectedly. Thankfully, there are some things that you can do to help alleviate the feeling that you are experiencing.
What Causes Muscles to Become Tight or Stiff?
Many things can contribute to your muscles becoming stiff or tight, but sitting for too long is often the culprit. The modern lifestyle has us becoming more sedentary than we were ever meant to be. Technology has not made it any easier. Activities such as typing and working with various gadgets cause us to forget about good posture. This results in blood being squeezed out of our muscles, and this ends up causing tightness over time. In order to alleviate this feeling, you must find a way to loosen up those muscles and work to prevent a risk of injury.
How to Relieve Knots
If it feels like you have knots in your muscles, there are a few things that you can do. The first is to give that area of your body a rest. Allow your body to heal. You will also want to engage in some light aerobic exercise, as this will warm your muscles up and often bring some relief. You can also try hot and cold therapy, or apply a muscle rub. You can alternate a muscle salve with CBD topicals to further encourage relaxation and ease muscle tension.
Proper Stretching Can Help
It is important to focus on proper stretching techniques in order to take care of muscle stiffness. You want to make sure that you are holding the stretching position, and then working to contract your muscles. You will want to do this several times in order to start to alleviate any stiffness that you are experiencing. It is always important to remember that stretching should not hurt. If you experience pain, it is an indicator that you need to stop and perhaps see a physician.
The more often you stretch, the healthier your muscles will be. A daily yoga workout is a great way to get some good stretches in while also doing some strengthening exercises.
Massage
A good massage is a great way to ease tight muscles, and it does not have to be a vigorous sports massage to get great results. A gentle massage with oils and a rub down will ease stiffness and make your muscles more supple too, ready for your next workout. Massage also speeds muscle repair by improving blood flow.
Work On Your Core Strength
It is advised that you work on strengthening your core. A weak core is often the cause of tight muscles, so this is a logical place to begin. It is the core of your body that is responsible for stabilizing both your pelvis and spine. When it is weak, your spine can easily go out of alignment. This can cause all kinds of health issues, with one of them being tight muscles. When you strengthen this area, then you can often bring relief and experience far fewer instances of stiff muscles.
These are all things that you can do when your muscles are tight and stiff. Since you never know when this is going to happen, it is beneficial to know ahead of time what works for you. When you do, you will be able to immediately set out to reduce the tightness and get back to a normal feeling as quickly as possible.