Say you wake up every morning, get out of bed, and walk out your front door, and you always run into some cobwebs that have been made overnight. You do this every morning, but then you go on vacation, and that spider has more time to build bigger and thicker webs, and when you get back it’s a lot harder to break through.
Your muscles work a lot like this in which if you fail to actively use them every day they build up fibres between them restricting your movement and making you less flexible increasing your chance of injury. The longer you don’t use these muscles the more time they have to develop stronger fibres and breaking these fibres becomes harder and harder.
So let’s get a bit more technical for a second here. When you sleep these fibres develop between the moving surfaces of your muscles causing adhesions and tension which impede movement. Essentially like cobwebs if they aren’t cleaned up regularly they build up and become harder and harder to remove. There is however a number of things you can do to prevent these builds from happening.
Morning Stretch
It’s always so hard to wake up in the morning, and it’s a common feeling to feel very stiff when you first get out of bed. This is because your muscles have begun seizing together through a process of covalent, and hydrogen bonding. As you start to move around your movement begins to free up because these bonds are being broken.
If you ever see a cat or dog wake up in the morning you’ll notice the first thing they do is stretch out their limbs.
That brings us to the first and one of the most important ways to deal with these bonds, stretching. Stretching all of your muscles in the morning not only breaks up these bonds and frees your muscles it also makes you feel much fresher as well as increasing your flexibility. It also helps to wake you up and keep you alert.
Exercise
Apart from stretching every morning there are some great muscle strengthening exercises you can do that will help stretch out and loosen up your muscles as well. Here they are:
- Deep Squats: The squat is one of the best exercises there is and no workout is complete without them. The reason the squat is so effective is because it works almost all of your muscles, and long, slow, deep squats are a great way to break up any bonding.
- Shoulder Circles: These are a great way to loosen up your shoulders in the morning.
- Lunges: Lunges are a tough leg exercise and they help stretch out all of your leg muscles. Just remember to do them slowly and try to stretch out your muscles as much as you can.
Massage Therapy
Another great way to release muscle tension and bonding is to get a deep tissue massage. These types of massages are a manual way to target each muscle and to break up any bonding that may have formed. Getting these massages is a great way to deal with bonding that has been built up as a result of an injury because it target the muscle but doesn’t require you to move it.
So remember to keep using your muscles, and that a great pre-morning ritual to get into is stretching. If you stretch every morning before you start your day you will find yourself feeling more alert and fresh.