Soft Tissue For Softballers

Muscle soreness is a fact of life during the softball season. And in our post last week we went over the various causes of soreness and what to do about it (Hint: the answer isn't always stretching) Let's talk about soft tissue and how we can keep our muscles in tip-top shape. Let's review some important concepts that we need to keep in mind to be effective with our soft tissue.

#1. When do we need to do soft tissue? We talked about different components of soft tissue that need to be addressed:

• Strong vs. Weak: When we have a weak muscle, we strengthen it.
• Long vs. Short: A short muscle is a muscle at rest that is structurally shorter, and we need to stretch it to fix this problem.
• Tight vs. Lax: A tight muscle is really helpful to target with soft tissue. A tight muscle is when the contractile state of the nervous system, when we are stressed or overtrained, our muscles have higher resting tone.

It's important to understand the difference between short and tight. Sometimes, stretching isn't the best solution for our soft tissue problems. Here are some indications that stretching is not effective:

• You don't see results from your stretching in 2-3 weeks.
• You quickly lose results when you stop stretching.
• You feel like you have to chronically stretch for the rest of your life.

Instead of just stretching, try doing soft tissue followed by strengthening. Here’s why this works: Think about 5 guys trying to pick up a car, except four of the guys are slackers which forces one guy to do most of the heavy lifting– if one guy is doing all the work, he's going to get tired and worn down. We need to give him a break and help him recover (soft tissue), but to fix the problem we also need the other guys to jump in and pull their weight (strengthening). Unless our other four guys are strong enough and actually helping, the same guy is going to get tired and sore the next time.

Our muscles work the same way. It’s never just one muscle working but always a group of muscles. When one is chronically sore, it tends to mean that muscle is getting overworked and other muscles aren’t doing their fair share.

#2. Now that we know when we need to do soft tissue, let's talk about where we need it. Here are some common areas where a softball player might experience tightness:

• Upper trap: These are the neck muscles that we all know about.
• Infraspinatus: One of our rotator cuff muscles will no doubt experience soreness this season.
• QL: This muscle plays a large role in our rotation throughout our trunk.
• Low back paraspinals: This muscle is straightforward to overuse when we load through extension rather than really using our backside power through our glutes.
• T spine: This muscle plays a part in our rotation through our midline trunk.
• Calves: Especially in those cleats all weekend, this muscle can take a beating.

Even if you don't feel any tightness in these areas, you might have trigger points that you don't even know are there. These are called latent trigger points, and they can affect the way we move and cause active trigger points in other areas. So it's important to address them too!

#3. So how do we do soft tissue? Here are some methods that you might want to try:

• Pin and stretch: This involves applying some pressure and pinning down the muscle, then moving through your available range.
• Foam rolling
• Lacrosse ball
• Massage gun
• Massage
• Dry needling: For this soft tissue method, you will need to find a professional.

If you're new to soft tissue, don't force it. The goal is to encourage movement and relaxation, not exacerbate your pain and make you stiffer and tighter. And remember, the best method for soft tissue is whatever works best for you and your body. So try different methods and find what works for you!