Not stretching properly before being active may make your muscles work too hard and cause injury. When you stretch an injured area, you can increase blood flow and help your tissues heal faster.
Do you want to learn how to utilize stretch therapy after muscle strain?
Learn some simple ways to stretch the affected muscles out in a safe and healthy way by checking out our list below.
What Is Muscle Strain?
A muscle strain is when your muscle fibers are stretched or torn. Typically, this will happen because the muscles have been working too hard and have stretched too much. Another reason it may happen is that the muscles have been forced by the rest of the body to contract really tightly.
Either way, the muscle fibers can typically repair themselves over time. The muscle is still intact, but it has just been driven to do too much at once. The amount of time it takes depends on how severe the strain actually is. If it is a very severe case, a strained muscle may be completely torn and unable to function.
An assisted stretching muscle therapy can be good before you do anything too active. This may help prevent muscle strain, but not in all cases.
Consider being assessed by a medical professional for muscle strain, especially if it is debilitating and excessively painful.
Stretch Therapy After Muscle Strain
When we stretch our muscles out after a strain, it is really easy to make it worse and lead to a longer healing time.
This is why learning to properly treat your muscles when they are strained is crucial. You don’t want to hurt your muscles any more than they already are, but you want to help the body with blood flow to the injured muscles.
Light stretching is important to do as soon as you are able to because it will help increase your activity levels. Your muscles will heal a little faster because the blood flow will increase. Your body wants your muscles to get better too and sometimes a little help is necessary.
The most important thing to remember is to not further strain your muscles with excessive stretching or hard exercise. You want to be gentle until your muscles are healed, but be sure to continue moving lightly as much as possible.
Other Ways to Treat Strained Muscles
To treat a muscle strain or a pulled muscle, you can easily take over-the-counter medications to help the pain. This will help you have better flexibility and will reduce the overall pain coming from your injured muscles. Make sure that you are taking NSAIDS or acetaminophen, but ask your doctor first.
Another thing to do to treat your injured muscles is the PRICE method, which is protect, rest, ice, compress, and elevate. It is an easy step-by-step instruction that will help your muscles feel better faster.
Remember that the PRICE method is great in the beginning, but you don’t want your muscle to rest for an extremely long time. It can make the muscle stiff and cause you to lose muscle mass.
Start Stretching Properly
When you are feeling pain in your muscles and want to stretch them, you want to be careful. Don’t do too much too fast!
Take care of your muscles and utilize gentle stretching techniques so that they can heal and get you back to your regular routine. Stretch therapy after muscle strain may be a great way to help.
If you are interested in learning about some of the benefits behind stretching first thing in the morning, you should check out our blog post to see what you can find.