Treating your muscle tissue with self myofascial release (self massage) is a fantastic way to help you not only get over common overuse injuries but also stop them from happening in the first place. We can regain the lost elasticity while also helping flush out left over waste products in the muscle tissue.

But… doing this is only a small part of what I like to call the multi-faceted puzzle.

Even I, at first was a little puzzled when some of my athletes I coach over at TriSpecific.com couldn’t seem to fully shift there little (or sometimes big) overuse niggles.

So I dug a little deeper.

We do know for every effect there is a cause. Most assume the cause is at the point where it hurts, but this is rarely the case.

Common causes I see is the body’s break down in biomechanics due to many years of crappy day-to-day posture, both seated and while standing. Do you tuck your feet under your chair (heels raised off the ground)? What about sitting with your legs crossed.. Yep thought so, and how’s that hunched over the computer screen posture going for you?

Then there’s the hands on hips, hitched hip, less than optimal shoes and over time just like compound interest our muscles bind up and eventually cannot tolerate the demands we place upon them.

But wait there’s more, most of us live in a chronic state of dehydration which ends up making our muscle tissue ‘glue’ together and become restricted and start resembling something like this.

I don’t think you need me too tell you that your muscles aren’t going to do much for you when they resemble something like that do i?

Then there is something I believe hardly anyone thinks about. That’s called your PH Balance. PH (potential of hydrogen) is a measure of acid and alkalinity and is measure on a scale of 0-14, with 7 being neutral. 0 is very acidic, while 14 is the most alkaline. Your blood needs to sit between a very narrow window of 7.35-7.45 for you to live. That means your blood must be slightly alkaline. This is critical for normal enzyme functioning, oxygen transport, and pretty much every other process that involves blood.

So what the hell does this have to do with injury…

Well everything. See without going way too in-depth when we live in a continual ‘acidic state’ due to not only our typical western diet but also from the exercise or training we do, our body’s will aim to keep our blood within that narrow band. It does this via de-mineralisation of bone tissue and pulling nitrogen from your muscles, basically what I am talking about here is you’re literally cannibalising your body- (stress fractures anyone)?

What’s more is this continual chronic state of high blood acidosis makes our red blood cells (RBC) become thick, lethargic and slow moving. Just perfect for us athletes eh! This means we greatly limit oxygen and nutrients being delivered to our cells. Performance will be tough when your fight this…

Then there’s the lactic acid – ever thought of how this may effect your tissue health? Well a build of of lactate acid in the body can create stiffer muscles and dense connective tissue… it’s why we must roll this out with self myofascial release or better still myofascial compression techniques (our coined phrase at tptherapy – which means we put a programming element behind self massage).

Felling stiff, sore and achy? Well you know why.

Here’s the thing. Training and exercise is acid producing and an athletes (let alone non- athlete) main food staples are also acid producing. So what chance does your body have. This highly acidic state can wreak much more havoc than just your muscle tissue health. This high acidic state coupled with inflammation producing foods like wheat, gluten and sugar end up making our cell structure resemble swiss cheese. Holes everywhere allowing them to not only spill their contents but let the baddies in. Getting sick often?

This chronic acidosis and state of inflammation is a reason why athletes and non-athletes alike hold onto injuries way longer than they should when they are diligently working on the other pieces I have mentioned above.

Last week I did an interview with a Canadian buddy of mine on nutrition and how increasing the amounts of raw food in our diet we can not only create an alkaline state but better recovery, increased health and performance and just general well being. We have turned it into a webinar – it’s an hour long and packed full of awesome and useable information and you can check it out here