Good vs Bad Muscles
The fitness industry seems to have a love/hate relationship with certain muscles. We create narratives around these ideas like, it’s always good to feel the abs but never good to feel the neck, or never use the upper traps because they are overactive and causing neck pain, or always work the glutes because they are asleep… abs good! Neck bad. Lower and mid traps good! Upper traps bad. Glutes good! Hip flexors bad. So, where do we get these ideas from and do they have any foundation in the broader scientific literature? And while our intentions might be good are we unnecessarily creating harmful narratives and fear avoidant behaviors in our clients when we talk about muscles like this? Let’s explore where some of these ideas might come from and how we might create different narratives for our clients.
What exactly do we mean when we say or think about a muscle being good or bad? I’m sure we all mean slightly different things when we think it (or maybe we’re just saying stuff and don’t actually know what exactly we mean), but a common belief is that specific muscles tend to be prone to “overworking” and others are prone to being “inhibited”. Where do these beliefs come from? And what does overactive or inhibited actually mean?
The broad definition of an “overactive” muscle is a hypertonic muscle or a muscle that has more tone than is optimal for comfortable and controlled movement. Hypertonia can occur for a variety of reasons including but not limited to stoke, traumatic brain injury (TBI), brain tumor, neurodegenerative process like multiple sclerosis (MS) or Parkinson’s, or neurodevelopmental events like cerebral palsy (CP). Or maybe we mean something more like the “overactive” muscle is more likely to work when it shouldn’t be working. We’ve all been that person or had that client that asks if they should feel the movement being done in a certain place. For example, in an upper chest curl, are we supposed to feel the abs or the neck? Yes. as in, both, mostly likely! So, when we say “overactive” do we mean “enhanced excitability”?
What do we mean when we say “inhibited”? The broad definition of muscle inhibition is muscle hypotonia. Hypotonia is different from muscle weakness but can be associatedconcomitant with weakness. Hypotonia can be the result of damage to the brain, nerves, and or muscles from trauma, genetic disorders, or environmental factors and can be seen in down syndrome, Muscular dystrophy, Cerebral palsy Prader-Willi syndrome Myotonic dystrophy, and Tay-Sachs disease. Or are we talking about arthrogenic muscle inhibition, which has been clinically observed in patients after a traumatic injury like an ACL tear or reconstruction where the muscles around an injured joint may lack adequate sensory/afferent information and therefore produce altered motor/efferent muscle output? to temporarily protect the joint during tissue healing times? Why harp on definitions you ask? Well, in my very unscientific observations, we tend to say things without questioning the underlying credibility of the concepts that form the foundation of the beliefs and protocols around those things. Is there any way that a muscle can become inhibited or overactive outside of the above definitions? Probably. Does it mean our glutes aren’t working if we don’t feel them working? Probably not. Do we mean muscle imbalance when we say inhibited or overactive? Maybe.
In Pilates, most of our beliefs around muscle imbalance come from the work of Vladimir Janda, a Czech physiotherapist who believed theorized that muscle dysfunction was systemic and predictable when framed around his postural “syndromes”, which he called upper and lower cross syndrome. According to Janda we couldan visually identify muscle imbalances by assessing static postural tendencies, manual muscle testing, and faulty movement patterns. However, his theories on identifying muscle imbalance do not stand up to further scrutiny.
Many of Janda’s muscle imbalance studies rely on the observation that certain muscles which “weren’t supposed to be firing” were in fact firing and others weren’t firing when they should be firing as measured by EMG. However, we can’t necessarily rely on surface level EMG to give an assessment of muscle strength since EMG really only gives us a measure of potential excitability, not function and, furthermore, may not be giving an accurate reading of a single muscle and instead might be picking up neural activity from an underlying or surrounding muscle. Furthermore, the idea that there is a consistent and ideal firing pattern for a specific movement is currently unsupported in the literature.
Janda’s theories are a very tempting narrative to deliver to our clients. They feel like they should make sense. It would certainly make programming easy if postural analysis could quickly direct us to which muscles we needed to strengthen and which ones we needed to stretch to reduce injury risk and improve function, (a tenuous theory itself). As well intentioned as we may be, If we create narratives for our clients around muscles they should work and muscles they shouldn't work we run the risk of creating fear avoidant behaviors in our clients, which may do more harm than good. Instead of looking for the magical protocol that we can apply to our clients in pain, we should encourage them to keep moving and deliver programming that helps them move towards their goals in ways that feel meaningful to them. For example, if you notice someone has an anterior pelvic tilt it doesn’t necessarily mean their hip flexors need to be stretched. It’s not a and that it’s bad thing if they feel the hip flexorsthem working in a movement like leg lowers (in fact the dirty little secret of leg lowers is that you have to use your hip flexors). Or if someone has rounded shoulders it isn’t a sign that they should avoid feeling their upper traps in arm movements. Strengthening the upper traps might actually be helpful for someone with neck pain. Similarly, if someone feels their neck working in a chest lift it might just be because their neck isn’t particularly strong, not necessarily because their abs are weak. Rather than looking at someone’s posture and concluding that they should stretch certain muscles and work others, we should focus on strengthening the whole body through progressive loading.
The Pilates industry needs to move past outdated narratives. Muscles aren’t good or bad even when we look at how muscles contribute to postural tendencies or pain, and muscles likely don’t become inhibited or overactive without serious pathology present. Don’t let feeling the neck in a chest lift, the hip flexors in a leg lower, or the upper traps in arm movement stop your clients from getting stronger. As Pilates instructors it is our responsibility and obligation to create informed narratives of resilience for our clients. We can do this by constantly evaluating our language, methods, beliefs, and actions. Ask yourself why you cue a movement the way you do, why you think it’s bad to feel your upper traps, where you got the idea that the glute max is inhibited and don’t be satisfied with the answer “my teacher taught it that way”. Seek out answers to these questions based on evidence and choose your mentors carefully. I know I’m asking a lot, but I also have faith that we can evolve together for the betterment of the industry.
Anatomy of Pilates helps Pilates instructors feel more confident teaching people with pain and injury through anatomy and post-rehab courses, workshops, and 1:1 coaching.
1. Hypertonia | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
2. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/hypotonia#toc-what-is-hypotonia-
3. Lepley, A. S., & Lepley, L. K. (2022). Mechanisms of Arthrogenic Muscle Inhibition. Journal of Sport Rehabilitation, 31(6), 707-716. Retrieved Oct 27, 2023, from https://doi.org/10.1123/jsr.2020-0479
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6. Sadler, S., Cassidy, S., Peterson, B., Spink, M., & Chuter, V. (2019). Gluteus medius muscle function in people with and without low back pain: a systematic review. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 20(1), 1-17.