What is a Muscle Imbalance? Understanding and Relieving Your Pain

Have you ever been told that you have a muscle imbalance by your trainer, chiropractor or a physical therapist? If so, did you come away from your appointment with a vague notion of something being out of whack, but without being clear about what that really means? That’s the nature of muscle imbalances, they can seem perplexing and hard to explain. Muscles can be confusing; they attach and insert, flex and extend and can be agonists or antagonists. The good news is that understanding muscle imbalance isn’t that difficult.

The simplest explanation is that a muscle imbalance is a disparity between the strength and/or function of two muscles (or muscle groups) that have opposing tasks. For example, your quadriceps, or quads, are a muscle group on the front of your thigh that work to straighten out your bent knee and help with flexing your hip (bringing your leg toward your torso). Opposing your quads are a group of muscles that make up your hamstrings. They work to bend your knee and flex (or open) your hip. An imbalance between the quads and hamstrings is common among runners, and can lead to knee pain and muscle strain. This is an example of an imbalance between agonist muscles (the quads), which are prime movers, and the hamstrings, which are antagonists, whose job is to counterbalance the functions of those prime movers.

Other examples of muscle imbalances can be between stabilizers and mobilisers, usually muscles related to your moving your core and maintaining balance. You can also have an imbalance between the right and left side of your body, especially if pain, injury or other condition on one side of your body causes you to compensate by overusing the muscles on the other side. And it’s also possible to have an imbalance between your upper and lower body, such as a tight or weak lower back, which in addition to causing lower back pain, can also cause shoulder and neck pain.

A muscle imbalance can cause problems because it can place stress on your joints, create tightness in your muscles, cause muscle weakness, create shortening of a muscle, throw your posture out of kilter and cause you pain. In fact, most people who discover that they have any kind of muscle imbalance did so because they were seeking pain relief from a doctor or physical therapist. If a muscle imbalance isn’t corrected, over time it can cause inflammation of the muscles and joints involved, joint misalignment and increases the risk of becoming further injured, which translates into more pain.

So how do you develop a muscle imbalance? Actually, it’s easier than it sounds. A muscle imbalance can occur through:

• Poor posture. A prime example of this is the imbalance that develops between your upper back and chest muscles from sitting hunched over your computer or phone for long periods of time. What happens is as your shoulders become tighter and more and more rounded forward, the muscles in your upper back become elongated and weaken. At the same time, your chest, neck and abdominal muscles become shortened. This imbalance is so common, it has a name—upper crossed syndrome, and tends to cause pain in your neck, shoulders and upper back.
• Stressing your muscles by performing sports or everyday tasks with poor form.
• Excessive load-bearing on one side of your body. This usually happens as the result of an injury, trauma or pain, for example, limping when you have a leg injury, which places a lot of stress on your uninjured side of your body.
• Sitting for long periods of time. This can also cause upper crossed syndrome.
• Lack of exercise. Not moving and using certain muscle groups can lead to a muscle imbalance.
• Lack of strength training, for the same reason as above.
• Strength training or performing a physical activity with poor form can also lead to an imbalance between muscle groups, as this can overload or tire certain muscles.
• Not warming up your muscles before physical activity. Working cold or weakened muscles without getting them moving in more gentle ways first can aggravate or cause an imbalance.
• Some bone deformities, such as a discrepancy in length between your legs or scoliosis of the spine (a condition involving an atypical sideways curve of your spine), if untreated, can cause muscle imbalances as your body tries to compensate.

Treating a Muscle Imbalance

The first step in treating a muscular imbalance is to identify which muscles are involved. This can be done by a practitioner trained in body mechanics or a physical therapist. They can determine what’s going on by checking your posture, muscle strength and the length of the muscles involved.

Treatment involves strengthening or endurance exercises for weakened muscles, and stretching those muscles that are tight. Treating muscles that have become shortened may involve active or passive stretching plus soft tissue work. Also, you may be prescribed strength or coordination training, balancing exercises and relaxation routines to help break the cycle that originally created the imbalance. Your practitioner will also work with you to avoid retriggering the underlying cause of the imbalance, which is crucial for successful treatment.

In conjunction with physical therapy, acupuncture can play a key role in treating a muscle imbalance, too. That’s because acupuncture is effective in relaxing tight muscles and releasing motor points, which are spots where nerves are connected to muscles. Acupuncture can also help with weakened muscles and those that aren’t firing properly. Needling also works to increase circulation, reduce inflammation and alleviate pain.

In some cases, especially with muscle injuries, I use electric stimulation to enhance the effectiveness of a treatment. Electric stimulation, also called e-stim, involves the application of a mild and painless micro current to acupuncture needles in the affected area. This is done with a small machine that produces the current and has cords that can clip onto the desired acupuncture needles. Doing so can reach deeper into the muscle tissue, it can help prompt the muscle to fire, and is effective for reducing pain.

If you’ve been told that you have a muscle imbalance, or if you suspect that you do or are experiencing muscle or back pain and want to know about how acupuncture can help you, please contact me for further information.

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