A Word I Never Use: Tight
“Tight” is a useless word. It fails to foster useful decisions. In order to solve the problems of performance and health, we must use language with purpose and direction. Words are so much more than noise and ink. Language shapes decisions, gives texture to emotions, builds clarifying perspectives, and obscures reality. Tight belongs in that last category.
The Gift That Keeps On Giving
“Tight” and its derivations don’t give you actionable information. This is where you say, “But Austin, if I feel something tight, that means I need to do something about it. That’s action.”
“Yes, but the actions people choose from ‘tight’ aren’t productive. Hear me out.”
People use words like tight because our culture still lacks the awareness and vocabulary to describe what’s really going on. So when someone tells you “tightness” is evil, you’ll search for it like a vigilante. You may wind up manufacturing the feeling with any sensation that vaguely fits the description. If you get rid of tightness, then everything will be okay. Right?
Except the people who say they are tight usually keep saying they are tight.
This Damn Word…
The bigger problem is that you and someone else could make the same complaint about a muscle and be in vastly different positions. But you both describe it the same way: “tight.”
Alex walked into Apiros, doubled over, placing his hands flat on the concrete floor. With his head between his knees, he said, “See? My hamstrings are tight, Austin.”
Whereas Tyler barely got his hands to his shins and said the same thing.
Usually, people use different words to describe different situations. And yet, these two used the same word despite having long and short hamstrings. So many others do the same.
Because Alex and Tyler both used the same word, or their former practitioners did, they were given similar solutions: anything that changed the sensation, albeit temporarily. It’s usually some sort of stretching or massage because those are the typical emollients to tightness. But Alex and Tyler’s problems still went unsolved because they repeated the same complaints day after day, week after week, and stretching and massage weren’t (and never will be) solutions.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Alex and Tyler’s problems weren’t tightness but how they organized their skeletons, and perhaps a hyper-vigilant perceptual system looking for tightness anywhere they could find it. The solution was getting them to appropriate length and tension relationships through normal human movement.
Stretching A Long Muscle
Muscles feel good when they create tension through normal ranges of motion.
Stretching a long muscle further might make it longer, momentarily, and maybe change the sensation for a sec, but it fails to solve the problem: something you’re doing or not doing results in an uncomfortable sensation that you call tightness. However, a bungee cord for bridge-jumping daredevils is a precise length. Like your muscles, it should be taught at its longest length. Stretching it further—splat.
Tightness can go away in one set of precisely prescribed movement. So, instead of repeating a failing protocol for the umpteenth week in a row, hoping to vanquish tightness from your husk, move your bones into the positions you want and earn that range through muscular work.
Lastly, more range isn’t necessarily better. Controlled movement with the range you have is better.
Stretching A Short Muscle
Stretching a short muscle into a longer length never addressed the reason it shortened in the first place. (Muscles don’t spontaneously change length.) With the cause left unchecked, the muscle will return to shortness.
People rarely mention that the shortness often fulfills a need. It’s unwise to remove your crutch without giving yourself a leg to stand on, aka the muscular control, strength, and endurance in the positions you lack.
Stretching a muscle never gives people the bodily control they need to keep their tissues and joints in one piece. Getting muscles to contract and then relax—through movement—does wonders. I can’t tell you the number of times an athlete has told me, “Wow, I feel so free!” after I get them to move a certain way with weights.
So, here’s what I suggest you try:
Ban “tight” and its derivations from your vocabulary. Use words that describe: short, long, flexed, extended, externally rotated, higher, lower, etc. Watch how a more accurate vocabulary leads to better choices.
Make the muscle that bothers you work in new and creative ways, from longest to shortest positions. That pesky psoas tripping you up? Look up its action in an anatomy app, or ask Dr. Google, and then do that action. Flex your hip, without your pelvis moving, then slowly get it to extend in a way where there’s still tension on the front of your hip.
If you’re a coach or practitioner, reject your client’s use of our now-demonized word. Ask questions that illuminate what’s really going on.
Practice your words. Become literate of your internal world through journaling so you can help others become literate of theirs. Again, better words, better choices.