Muscles 'Tug of War' - Understanding Body Mechanics

Muscles 'Tug of War' - Understanding Body Mechanics

In this blog I will explore the importance of understanding how muscles interact with each other in a tug of war battle (body mechanics). Understanding this can help with:

• Improving Posture

• Developing a training routine

• Prevention of injuries

• Recovery from injury

• Developing treatments for painful conditions

• Generating advice for patients

  

  Muscle Interactions - Understanding Body Mechanics

What are Body Mechanics?

Learning anatomy is hard work. Remembering dozens of Latin words and retaining them in the context of movements and locations has never been described to me as a favourable aspect of studying acupuncture. That said, it is important. However, what I think is more important is understanding how different muscles and structures interact with each other. Understanding 'Body Mechanics' means you can play detective and gain a really good understanding of how someone's broad posture and movement is causing or contributing to someone's painful or restrictive issue.

For years, I had the pleasure of teaching students in one of the first sessions of their acupuncture degree course in York. This session is their 'Introduction to Bodywork', where they begin to learn how to blend hands-on techniques with biomedical anatomy knowledge and Chinese medicine theory. Rather than pile a load of names of muscles and bones onto them, we will often start with the analogy of a 'Tug of War' across the body. This enables them to understand how the body works mechanically, how their prospective patients end up with painful areas, and most importantly, how they can begin to analyse and create treatments - all without knowing all the names of the muscles and bones.

As this lesson was designed for new students with potentially no experience in body mechanics, the learning materials lend themselves well to anyone interested in the topic, so rather than rewrite these ideas, I've included an excerpt from the learning materials used in this session....

Tug Of War

.....our body is constantly carrying out several mini tug-of-wars between agonist and antagonist muscles to create the movement and stability we need to carry out our day-to-day tasks. To take this analogy further, let’s imagine that our muscles are the people at either end of the tug-of-war rope, and the mid-point of the rope itself is the joint we intent to move.

Here are some examples to help make sense of what happens to a joint when our muscles are operating healthily:

• In a healthy movement, team A will pull the rope (contracted agonist muscle) unopposed by the side B (relaxed antagonist muscle), and the mid-point of the rope (the joint) will move freely towards team A without any impediment.

• To stabilise a joint, both team A and B will pull gently with an equal force to keep the rope in a fixed stable position.

If our muscles operate in this way and are given adequate rest, they can sustain a healthy condition and avoid becoming tense or fatigued.

However, we also need to understand what happens when our muscles do not behave in this way. Even if our muscles are only gently pulling on a joint to stabilise it, or creating movement without any resistance as described above, without rest and recovery they will likely become fatigued and unable to operate effectively. Furthermore, if there is a constant back and forth motion between the agonist and antagonist, each muscle can become fatigued or, one muscle may decide that it is more efficient to remain contracted, thus creating more work for the other muscle.

This is commonly evident in people who carry out repetitive motions on a day to day basis. If we think of our tug-of-war teams, we can see that they will quickly become tired and fatigued if they work in this way, and their relentless pulling will be putting a large and constant strain on the rope (joint).

So far we have been describing the actions of simple joints that move in a linear direction. However, the ball and socket joints found in the hip and shoulder are a bit more complicated as they have a much more diverse range of movement. For example, our shoulder has around 30 muscles attached in or around it, and uses combinations of these muscles to create a movement in any given direction. Each of the muscles are different shapes and sizes and each one contributes to a particular movement of the shoulder joint. Some are more associated with large powerful movements and others are used more for finer movements and stabilisation of the joint. However, each muscle must work in collaboration with others to fulfil its function.

If we revert back to our tug-of-war analogy, all of a sudden things become a bit more complicated. Rather than having two teams pulling the rope in opposite directions, we now have multiple teams (multiple muscles), each with varying numbers of team members (varying muscle sizes), surrounding a central point (the joint) and pulling multiple ropes from different angles. To keep the central point stabilised, each team will instinctively need to know exactly how hard and in which direction to pull. Now imagine one team gets injured and decides to sit out. All of a sudden, this finely balanced tug-of-war becomes chaotic with teams having to change their roles and pull the rope harder to compensate for the missing team, thus becoming tired, fatigued and perhaps injured and needing to sit out themselves. Before long only a few teams are left doing a job that should be shared out between several teams. They’re tired, in pain, having to work constantly, unable to maintain stability of the central point and no longer able to move in the direction they should be moving. It’s now easy to see how an injury of one muscle in the shoulder can over time lead to multiple areas of pain and restriction of movement across the whole shoulder area.

Practical Application

This analogy hopefully provides an understanding of why issues with the shoulders and hips can often need treatment in many different areas, above, below, in front or behind the area of pain or restriction, and also why it can take time to recover from a painful issue. For example, it provides a good explanation of why conditions such as frozen shoulder progress through many stages over time.

First, there is pain in the joint, which affects the movement of your muscles.

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Pain can then move and vary across the shoulder, upper back and neck.

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Then, as the pain subsides, movement becomes restricted.

Although frozen shoulder includes inflammation in the joint, and restriction of connective tissue as well, it still serves as a good example of how the tug of war between different structures of the shoulder evolves and creates a changing dynamic between different muscles and the shoulder joint.

Another good example for the Tug of War anaology is that of Upper Cross Syndrome (UCS), which is probably one of the most common postural presentations we have today. I've spoken in detail about the mechanics and causes of UCS in another post, so if you're not familiar with it, then you can catch up here:

https://www.benelliot.co.uk/post/upper-cross-syndrome-analysis-and-treatment-guide-for-the-condition-most-have-but-didn-t-know-exi

UCS, in summary, is an imbalance between the muscles of the upper back, chest, anterior (front) neck and posterior (back) neck, which results in rounded shoulders and the head being shifted forwards. Our heads, being quite heavy, need good support from the neck to keep it upright and stable. This shift in position of the head vs gravity, creates an imbalance of stresses across the whole upper body.

I've provided a video that gives a good visual example of how this forward shift affects the muscles at the back of the neck in particular.

Maintaining Body Mechanics Balance

All the examples given highlight the importance of keeping a good balance between our muscles. The treatments I offer tend to favour relaxing off shortened or tightened muscles, and clearing out fatigued muscles enabling them the recover and fuction better. It is also very important to focus on strengthening and conditioning those muscles that have become fatigued or weakened. I would usually approach this by giving a patient some stretches and basic exercises to do at home over the course of weeks or even months. I also have a good relationship with physiotherapists and sports therapists who I can refer my patients onto if I feel like they need some more specific or targeted guidance for strength and conditioning.