Getting Back to Basics

A tight lower back. Stiff hips. Hamstrings that feel like they're made of piano wire. Achy shoulders after a long day at the computer.

While these areas may seem unrelated, they're all part of an incredible network called the posterior chain: the muscles and connective tissues running from your heels all the way to the base of the skull. 

Pretend for a minute you're going scuba diving. You wrangle on your wetsuit, stepping in with your feet, you wiggle it up past your hips and tug it onto your arms. Just for now, you leave it unzipped. This means, your legs and back are working hard to walk or bend over, while your chest and belly is free to roam about the cabin. You may feel a little unbalanced. When you take that wetsuit off, you suddenly feel less restricted and operating goes a little more smoothly. This is what tension in the posterior chain feels like. 

One word that's started to appear often is torsion, which refers to twisting or rotation. While your body is incredibly adaptable, the reality is that over time, micro (and macro) twists can accumulate and have a massive effect on the posterior chain.

Our bodies naturally rotate and twist throughout the day, but tension has a way of creating uneven torque from one side to the other. Maybe you always carry your bag on one shoulder or cross the same leg every time you sit. Perhaps stress has your shoulders creeping toward your ears and that's your default mode. In spite of being adaptable, over time, these repetitive movements have a way of creating subtle patterns of compensation. One side starts doing more than its fair share of work while the other side is mentally checked out.

That's often when people say things like, "I just woke up with a sore back," when in reality the body has been whispering signs of imbalance and tension long before it started shouting.

Your Body Loves Balance

The posterior chain isn't asking for perfection- but, the complex design craves balance.

Taking mental note of your day to day activities and shaking it up a little bit can help stop back pain in its tracks.

Movement is nourishment for muscles. Just like staying in place for too long isn't good, over doing exercise can cause inflammation in the muscle tissues and fluid build up in the joints, while leading to slower recovery times.

Self-Care Goes Beyond Stretching

When it comes to the posterior chain, you'll want to spend time stretching. Bending down to touch your toes is a great way to start. It helps lengthen the hamstrings and encourages decompression in the spine. There's a thousand ways to take care of yourself and nurture your well-being, here are our top 4 ways to care for your legs, glutes and back that aren't stretching.

1. Foam Rolling Your IT Bands- perhaps the most uncomfortable and painful self care tool anyone ever came up with. However, your IT bands are not muscles, but still, they're major stabilizers for the knee an hip. When your IT bands absorb torsion and shock, they can pull your leg and lower back out of alignment. Rolling keeps them loose.

2. Use Heat- ahh, the days of the good old heating pack. Placing heat on the glutes and lower back promotes blood flow. Blood flow encourages tight muscles to open up.

3. Taking walks- walking encourages circulation and blood flow throughout the body. Your gastrocnemius is considered the heart of the lower body. When blood gets to the legs, your calf muscles assist in contracting and sending that blood back to the heart. Walking=good circulation.

4. Use a massage gun- honestly, I don't know where I'd be without my Hypervolt. It never sees it's case because I use it everyday. IT bands, calves, forearms, neck, quads, hamstrings, glutes- they see the massage gun every day. This is a great recovery tool that when used pro-actively, can literally stop imbalances from ever taking place.

Our goal at Rally and Revive is to help you feel your best and we do this by working with your body to find the little idiosyncrasies that pull and twist your body into positions it was never meant to be in.