For most folks, when something feels ‘tight’ or we notice a limitation in movement, we immediately suspect that it’s a muscular issue. We assume that one or more muscles in that region are tight and that’s what limiting our movement. The feeling of tightness or noticing a loss of flexibility can come from a variety (and often a combination) of factors. For example, like we discussed in this article, limitations in movement can also come from things like a loss of strength. In this post I wanted to delve into another possible player in lost mobility, neural tension.

Are you nervous yet?

Now, the first thing to clear up is that nerves don’t really get “tight”. They aren’t very stretchy and they don’t have fibres that allow them to lengthen and shorten. So when I say ‘neural tension’ I am really talking about the inability of a nerve to slide through or past the bodies tissues (muscles, joints, facial, skin etc). This limitation typically occurs by the nerves becoming sticky and getting glued down to the tissues around them, which doesn’t allow them to move freely. Alternatively, the nerves can become extra sensitive and our body can respond to us putting tension on/loading the nerves by creating a stretch sensation and telling our muscles to contract in order to stop us from moving into a position that would further load those nerves. We might summarise this by saying that we can have a ‘structural’ limitation; sticky nerves, or a ‘functional’ limitation; hyper-sensitive nerves.

What next? How do I improve my sticky/sensitive nerves?

There are generally two categories of techniques that are used to directly influence nerve stickiness and sensitivity; ‘slides/glides/flossing’ and ‘tensioners’. Sliding/gliding/flossing techniques can help to normalise the amount of motion and the ability of the nerves to slide through the body. Tensioning techniques help to change sensitivity of the nerves may help by affecting the fluid levels within the nerve; i.e it ‘rehydrates’ the nerve helping it function better. In my experience I have found that sliding/flossing motions are generally the better motion to start with and tensioning techniques can be added in later once you have a more full range of motion.

What do they look like?

Here are a couple of examples of nerve gliding techniques. If you feel that you may have some nerve related issues to your pain it’s best to get a thorough assessment and professional guidance to help direct you down the safest path!

Hopefully this info helps you better understand a few more of the various factors that may be contributing to changes in flexibility or mobility and gives you a few ideas of how you may be able to improve your overall movement!

As always, have fun, train hard and train smart!