sport and health

Muscle contracture

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Definition

Muscular contracture : involuntary, insistent and painful contraction of one or more skeletal muscles. The muscle involved appears rigid and the hypertonia of the muscle fibers is appreciable to the touch.

Causes

The contracture is in itself a defensive act that occurs when the muscle tissue is stressed beyond its physiological tolerance limit.

Excessive loading triggers a defense mechanism that causes the muscle to contract. Predisposing causes can be mechanical and / or metabolic in nature but have not yet been clearly defined. What is known is that they are somehow related to the following factors:

  • lack of general and specific heating
  • unsuitable physical preparation
  • excessive stresses, sudden and violent movements
  • joint problems, postural and muscular imbalances, lack of coordination

The contracture is the least severe of acute muscle injuries since it does not cause any anatomical lesion to the fibers. What occurs is simply an involuntary and permanent increase in their tone.

Symptoms

To learn more: Muscular Contracture Symptoms

The subject affected by a contracture feels a modest and widespread pain along the affected muscular area. Hypertonia is perceived rather clearly and the athlete complains of a lack of elasticity of the muscle during movements. Palpation allows you to appreciate the involuntary increase in muscle tone and to evoke pain, especially in some points (active trigger points).

Pain is tolerable and does not prevent sports activity from continuing. However, to avoid the risk of complications, it is advisable to stop training or competition immediately.

What to do - Treatment

Even in this case, rest is the most effective therapy. To recover from a contracture, it normally takes 3-7 days to stop, which could become many more if the right recovery times are not respected. Useless and counterproductive to continue to carry out sports activities that evoke discomfort or pain in the affected area.

To accelerate recovery, all those activities that help to stretch the muscles and promote the flow of blood to the muscles are useful.

A moderate aerobic activity combined with some stretching exercises helps to relax the muscles both directly (stretching) and indirectly (local hyperemia). The ideal would be to also associate a decontracting massage at the end of the activity in order to loosen the muscular tensions and obtain benefits even at analgesic level

Definitely useful, but to be used only in the most serious cases and under medical supervision, are the anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and muscle relaxants which, with their action, help to relax the muscles.

Among the useful physical therapies to accelerate recovery times we mention electrotherapy, iontophoresis and stretch and spray.

If the symptomatology does not disappear after 10 days of conservative treatment (rest), it is good to undergo specialist examinations to make sure that there are no more serious muscle injuries or that the pain is not the consequence of another problem (myofascial syndrome, postural imbalance, joint problems, etc.).

Read also: Muscle Contracture Remedies ยป

Contracture and Cramps

The symptomatology of contracture is similar to that of cramp from which it differs only in some aspects:

  • for the cause of onset that for cramps is more related to energy / metabolic factors
  • for healing times (much longer for contracture)
  • for the pain felt (much more violent in case of cramps)
  • for the consequences on the performance (while in case of contraction the subject succeeds in resuming the activity without particular problems in case of cramps the interruption is almost inevitable)

Often the boundary between contracture and stretching is thin and it can happen that a simple hypertonus hides the elongation of some muscle fibers.

Prevention

The prevention of contractures is aimed at eliminating the predisposing and / or perpetuating factors:

  • always carry out adequate heating
  • make sure you are in the right physical condition to support the effort
  • cover properly in the winter months and, if necessary, use specific creams during the warm-up phase
  • allow yourself the right times for recovery and regeneration
  • try to correct any muscular and / or articular imbalances