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The Bendy Blog: Flexibility Training Articles
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Obturator Nerve Tension Test & Nerve Glide
Obturator nerve tension refers to a situation where the obturator nerve, one of the main nerves that goes through our inner thighs, is prevented from sliding like it’s normally supposed to and instead tugged into a position of too-much-tension when we try to stretch our adductors (inner thigh muscles). This can be tricky because it may feel a whole lot like muscle tightness, so it’s important to be able to recognize whether the inner thigh “tightness” or “stretching” sensation you are feeling is actually a muscle stretch (good!) or nerve tension (probably less productive) - so let’s talk about how to figure that out!
Is Nerve Tension Limiting Your Shoulder Range of Motion?
When it comes to being able to reach your arms overhead (shoulder flexion), there are a couple of nerves that - when under tension - can cause tightness in this range of motion. The two most common troublemakers are the ulnar nerve and the median nerve - because they impact very similar ranges of motion, I’m lumping them together in the same blog post. Let’s learn how to identify if they’re restricting your range of motion, and what to do about it!
How To: Femoral Nerve Glide for Tight Hips (2 Ways!)
As a follow-up to Monday’s post, Stubbornly Tight Hip Flexors? Quick Test for Femoral Nerve Tension, here are two quick, easy nerve glides you can do to help un-stick your femoral nerve before lunging into deeper stretches (pun 100% intended).
Stubbornly Tight Hip Flexors? Quick Test for Femoral Nerve Tension
Do you feel like your hip flexors (or quads) are always pretty stiff, even when doing regular, dedicated stretching? What if I told you the culprit may not be your tight muscles at all and no amount of passive lunges and hip stretches would really make a difference?
Time to learn about the role of our good ol’ femoral nerve and how it behaves differently in out stretches than our hip flexors and quad muscles.
Gentle Sciatic Nerve Glide for Happier Hamstrings
If you have sciatic nerve tension holding back your flexibility training any time you try to stretch your hamstrings, adding some nerve mobilizations like a glide and a tensioner during your warm up can help alleviate some of that tension so you can make sure your later stretching as addressing the muscle, not just tugging and tensing your sciatic nerve even further.
How to Tell if Hamstring “Tightness” is Nerve or Muscle Tension
If you have been trying to stretch your “tight” hamstrings but have seen limited progress, or if you often feel hamstring stretches in your calves or low back - it may not actually be your hamstring muscles that are the problem - it may be your sciatic nerve!
“Diagnosing” Muscle Tightness vs. Nerve Tension
The role of our nervous system on flexibility training is something I wish I learned about way earlier in my training (because, spoiler alert, it needs to be treated totally different from our muscular system). This post is aimed to help get y’all up to speed on the basics of “neurodynamics” in flexibility training so you can start to understand the role your unique nerves play in your own personal training.