As with most exercises or modalities, stretching is good, however the intent or your goal is the key to successfully achieving your objective.

If you are stretching simple to lengthen a muscle because its tight, you won’t meet your objective of loosening that muscle.  For example, I can pull sideways on my head to stretch my trapezius muscles all day long, but it won’t become any longer.  Conversely, I might be doing myself a disservice by tightening them even more!

So if yanking on my head won’t lengthen my traps, how do I reduce the pain in my shoulder and neck?

If we think about our objective, we want to loosen up the upper trapezius muscle. Now take one step back…. What is making the trapezius muscle tight?  There are a few options here:

  • There might be some inflammation that can stiffen the muscle or joint.
  • There might be a knot or trigger point.
  • There might be nerve tension.
  • The muscle might be contracted or shortened

If we consider these options, most people fall under the second or third possibility. Inflammation usually doesn’t happen unless there is a specific reason.  Additionally, although you may feel that your muscle is contracted or shortened, this generally happens in certain scenarios, such as post surgical cases.

Now that we have narrowed down what is making the muscle tight we ask why?  The answer… Nerve signal.

That tightness in your trap muscle is caused by a hyperactive nerve signal.  In this case we need to trick your body, in order to reduce that signal.  This will reduce the nerve signal and loosen the muscle.

The first trick is based on Sherrington’s law, a well-known principle of physiology.

Sherrington’s law: Muscles work in pairs, such that when one muscle contracts, its opposite muscle receives a nerve signal to release.

Again, think about stretching your neck and shoulder muscles (upper trapezius). Most people do this by pulling their head to the opposite side. So by pulling your head to the left, your stretch the right trapezius muscle.  The problem here is that the muscles on the opposite side (left) of the neck don’t contract; they simply bunch up and squash together.

But if you actively contract those muscles on the left while also stretching the muscles on the right, the muscles on the right receive a nerve signal—a reflex reaction—telling them to let go. This double action releases the right upper trapezius muscles mechanically, by pulling on it, and also neurologically, by sending it a nerve signal to relax. This powerful technique “fools” the muscle into relaxing.

The neck muscle stretch makes use of a second trick as well: it’s designed to create tension in the entire fascial chain that the trapezius belongs to. How does this work? Suppose I spread a beach towel out on the sand so it’s perfectly smooth. Now I grab it at the center and pull upward. The towel puckers toward my hand, creating a big fold. When I let it go, the fold remains. This puckered cloth is like kinked fascia. If I try to smooth it out by pulling at the towel, it’ll take forever, because the towel slides around, creating new folds. A better method is to hold down one end of the towel and pull the other end. In exactly the same way, when you’re trying to smooth out a muscle, you can exert more leverage on it by holding down both ends of its chain so the whole chain is taut. Otherwise, everything slips around just like the towel does.

 

As you may suspect by now, these stretches aren’t easy. They require strong effort and a willingness to face discomfort at the beginning, until your body becomes familiar with them. But if you stretch once a day for only a couple of weeks or so, the mind-muscle connection will kick in, and your body will really begin to understand the stretches. It’s like learning a dance step. Your body repeats what your mind tells it to do until the movement becomes ingrained and the body can do it without the mind’s prompting.