Stretch or Strengthen: What's Best

 

 

Hello everybody, this is Dr. Aaron Seaton with The Chiropractic Place.

Today's video is about stretching or strengthening.

Sore Muscle Atrophy

This is a common question I get in the office, and we'll dive into it to explain it better.

Now, somebody who sits often has chronic, maybe neck or lower back pain.

It's a good idea to start stretching and getting that stuff moving, and chiropractic care helps open that up.

But if you're sitting a lot, there's a good chance that you're experiencing some muscle atrophy, meaning the muscles aren't quite strong enough to hold you up, so we want to incorporate some strength training to go with that.

Strength Training

Now, most of the time, I see patients that have been stretching a lot, they probably haven't been doing enough strength training, they've been loosening the neck, stretching their lower back, getting adjusted, and they're wondering, "Hey, doc, I thought I'd be better by now."

Or whatever that is.

And we tell them, hey, we need to incorporate some strength training to go with that, we have to have skeletal muscle support, these weight-bearing joints, our spine, these are all weight-bearing joints that have to interact with gravity whenever we're up moving around, and we need muscles to help hold us up.

The muscles also help protect the joints from moving too much and getting injured, so we want to incorporate strength training as part of our daily routine to help stimulate that skeletal muscle and keep our bones and joints upright.

Stretching

Stretching is also important because you can go too far the other way.

Some people work out six days a week and never stretch.

They wonder why they always feel tight, why their bones hurt, their joints hurt, their muscles hurt, and that, in that case, is somebody not stretching enough, so the stretching helps loosen the muscles, it helps encourage blood flow to the joints and the muscles, the tendons, this is an important factor.

So ideally, there is no one versus the other.

It is.

We want to be doing both.

Yes, we want to stretch, maintain our flexibility, and have a full range of motion with our joints, but we also need to strengthen.

We need muscles to be strong, support us, and protect our joints, so both of these together are ideal if you want to live the best quality of life, decreasing the pain as best we can.

These two together are going to get it done.

I'm Dr. Aaron Seaton with The Chiropractic Place.

 

Call our office today to schedule an appointment to kickstart your healthy life: 530-221-8443

 

 

*The transcription is auto-generated by a program and may not be accurate. In order to ensure you get all the information from the video properly, you must watch the video.