What is Tension?

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What is Tension?

It’s a simple yet complicated answer:  Tension is ignorance in its physical manifestation.

Why we tense up:

It’s our body’s natural response to protect us from some external influence that’s deemed a “threat”—or something the body doesn’t yet understand.  You ever wonder why your shoulders slouch forward, neck veins start flaring up and you end up tensing some other part of your body that has nothing to do with an exercise?  That’s because your body is scared of:

1.     a movement it’s not familiar with

2.     a food it can’t stomach

3.     a life stress it can’t take

When you’re tense, you use up more energy than you need in order to accomplish a movement.  The plus side of this is hypertrophy training for muscle gain, but I’m pretty sure any article on T-Nation can explain that better than I can.  I want to tell you about the implications to your body about constantly moving in an inefficient movement pattern.

Tension requires concentrated neuromuscular activation.  The more tension you use, the more you trigger a metabolic effect in your body.  In other words, you will use more energy at a cellular level to accomplish even the simplest of tasks.  The lesson is to think about the movement you are performing with intent and ask yourself:  Do I really need to use this much energy?

If your answer is yes, the goal is to think about how to perform that movement with less tension.  Some ways to do that:

1.     Breath more efficiently.  If you don’t know how to properly take in or expel air, you will gas yourself out at the worst possible moment

2.     Unload the movement.  Even if it’s just by a little bit, you can perform a movement more efficiently with less load.

3.     Load the movement.  Perhaps your body needs that extra stimulus from touch or more weight to gain more flexibility.

4.     Relax other parts of the body that aren’t pertinent to your prime movers

Think about it like this:  You’ve done the heaviest deadlift you’ve ever done.  It wasn’t perfect form, but it was a PR.  So, no harm, no foul, right?  Eh…Well, if you’re power lifting for competition or doing a 1 rep max day, I’ll give you a high five.  However, if you’re training such high tension to the point where you aren’t walking like you’re on a cloud—you just might want to reevaluate what you’re doing. 

Let’s take it a step back from the barbell:  What if your calf tenses up with every step when you’re going on your morning run?  What if you can’t flip a burger at your famous summer BBQ because you did too many farmer’s walks?  What if you can’t catch a ball during the game because you’re thinking too much about your new baby on the way?   In fact, what if you can’t just go to the bathroom because you just had a stressful call at work and you’ve lost your breath? 

Tension has neural carryover into every movement we perform.  The more relaxed the movement, the less tension we carry.  The less tension we carry, the more efficiently we move.

When you train, play, and move, strive to move as efficiently as you can in all different planes of movement.   Explore movement to educate your body on how to best maximize its potential in both performance and the sport of life.

What’s your favorite tension-free movement that is your body’s personal reset button?