Increasing muscle pliability is the goal of many recovery techniques because it is fundamental to high-quality human movement.
Muscle pliability is a term that describes the optimal, qualitative state of your muscle tissue.
Having “pliable” muscles means that they are supple and resilient. They move without restriction and have elastic quality to them. This allows them to absorb and disperse forces. It helps them operate more efficiently.
Unlike tight, knotted-up muscles, pliable muscles allow you to move, train, and perform to the best of your abilities while minimizing the risk of injury.
Consistent pliability work helps to prepare your tissues for the movements of life’s demands. Pliability improves both your function and recovery so you can keep doing the things you love.
Thats what every athlete or active individual wants, so you should know there are two approaches to improve your muscle pliability.
You can either do it by directly manipulating your tissues, or indirectly influencing your global body systems.
So here are some ways you can increase your muscle pliability.
Directly Targeting Tissue for Muscle Pliability
The first things you can do to improve your tissue pliability revolve around working on the tissues directly. Some can be done on your own, and others require a trained professional.
1. Soft Tissue Therapy
There’s a reason every elite team and sports organization around the globe has soft tissue specialists on their staff. It works!
And we aren’t talking about a nice spa-like relaxing massage here. Relaxation is useful for people, and a relaxing massage is great. However, to improve pliability of your tissues, the therapist needs to be more specific in the techniques used.
While the science of soft tissue therapy is only starting to understand why it works, its something that’s been relied on by top athletes for decades.
Today we can actually begin to measure the changes in tissue compliance and elasticity before and after tissue work (Jędrzejewski 2020, Costello 2016).
Trained therapists use the skill of their hands along with specialized tools (IASTM) to get the results you need. These approaches can be highly target to specific tissues, structures, and myo-fascial chains.
If you want to improve muscle pliability, skilled hands-ion tissue work is the gold standard.
Tip: Unless you’re a professional athlete, you can start with 4-8 specific sessions with a licensed manual tissue therapist to make changes. Then reduce to weekly or monthly tune-ups to stay pliable.
2. Self MyoFascial Release
The less effective (but also less costly) approach is to use a roller or ball to apply compression to your muscles. This is far less specific in what types of tissues are targeted and where it impacts.
Still, when done regularly it can help maintain your general tissue pliability or the improvements you are getting through manual therapy. It’s easy to spend 5-10 minutes before or after a workout to see some benefit.
The key for most people is to not just roll around on them, but to slow down and focus and the areas of tension.
Tip: Roll a muscle group for 30 seconds to identify tight areas. Then spend 1-3 minutes on each and focus on your breathwork to relax.
Bonus: Using a vibrating roller may provide extra benefit in the muscle relaxing by affecting your nervous system.
3. Cupping
Although cupping has been a part of traditional eastern medicine for a long time, the use of cupping to specifically decompress fascial tissues in athletes has gained popularity in the last decade.
You can think of cupping like other soft tissue therapy that uses tools. However, instead of compressing the tissue, it uses the suction to lift and decompress layers of tissue (Tham 2006) and change the biomechanical properties of tissue.
Cupping has been show to increase blood flow and range of motion, so it can help to stimulate physiological improvements in tissue pliability.
A trained specialist will target placement of cups to influence both local tissue and connected muscle chains. They will also either have you move while the cups are applied or move the cup along your muscle.
Tip: Move. For pliability, active myo-decompression therapy seems to have benefits of just passively applied cups.
Stretching Does Not Enhance Muscle Pliability On Its Own
Many people and professionals think of stretching first when we start talking about muscle pliability. And it may or may not help. However, there is evidence in research (Ylinen, 2009) and practice that stretching helps more with the neurological control of muscle tension, not the actual physical muscle pliability.
So while stretching is useful, it works best when combined with manual soft tissue therapy from a professional or after a foam rolling session on your own.
TIP: Foam roll on targeted areas for 5-10 minutes, then perform some contract/relax stretches to enhance mobility.
Indirectly Affecting Muscle Pliability
The second big group of ways to increase muscle pliability is to target broader, systemic effects. instead of targeting the specific tissues, you work on systemic aspects of wellness that will have an in-direct affect on the pliability of your muscles and connective tissue.
4. Move
The act of moving your body through full ranges of motion has a myriad of benefits. Moving the tissues brings blood flow, changes neural input, and stimulates physiological changes.
We know that lack of movement will cause both functional (Campbell 2019 ) and physiological (Williams 1984) changes to tissues. The result of not moving is that muscle pliability gets worse.
So get out and move!
Tip: The orientation of fascia and connective tissue within muscle is often in diagonal patterns. Don’t just move like a robot, turn, twist and bend in three planes.
5. Hydrate
You probably know the human body is made up of about 70% water. It makes up the bulk of our tissue.
Well if you want pliable muscles you better keep this in mind.
Muscles and fascia/connective tissue are interlinked. The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a scaffold where the cells exist. It consists of fiber proteins and a fluid part.
The fiber proteins are mainly collagen, which gives strength, elasticity and structure. The fluid part contains compounds that influence pliability and elasticity. These components absorb water, which makes up 90% of the ECM.
So if you are getting dehydrated, you’re negatively impacting your pliability.
6. Reduce Chronic Inflammation
If you have ever experience an acute muscle injury or a chronic overuse injury, you’ve experienced inflammation. Ongoing inflammation in your tissues can lead to degeneration of those tissues(Howard 2020).
This can be affected by both systemic and local stresses. Systemically a diet and lifestyle that leads to chronic inflammation will have a negative effect on your tissue quality.
In specific tissues, chronic inflammation can results from overuse. Basically, you repeatedly load the tissues beyond what they can handle and recover from.
Do this long enough and your tissue will lose elasticity by changing the extracellular matrix composition and fiber alignment. Instead of aligned and sliding collagen fibers in your connective tissue, chronic inflammation can stimulate crosslinks that restrict motion.
Tip: Focus on improving your diet to affect systemic inflammation and build capacity in muscles and tendons to handle your activities.
Bonus: Red light therapy and Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields can help stimulate local healing and reduce inflammation.
Conclusion
Muscle pliability matters if you want to move more, move better, and do the things you enjoy.
Here are 6 strategies you can use to improve muscle pliability directly and indirectly.
Directly Targeting Muscle Pliability
- Professional manual tissue work
- Self Myo-Fascial Release with foam rollers or balls
- Professional Myo-Fascial Decompression therapy (cupping)
- Stretching is effective for neurological change but NOT physiological changes in pliability
Indirectly Targeting Muscle Pliability
- Move consistently and in 3 dimensions through exercise, yoga, and sports.
- Optimize hydration so your tissue can maintain the Extracellular matrix
- Reduce systemic and local inflammation to avoid tissue degradation and restrictions
Optimizing muscle pliability is about lifestyle, exercise, and recovery. Be proactive with these strategies and feel the difference.
References
Tham L, Lee H, Lu C. Cupping: from a biomechanical perspective. J Biomech. 2006;39(12):2183-2193,
Wei LIU, Sheng-ai PIAO, Xiang-wen MENG, Lian-hai WEI, Effects of cupping on blood flow under skin of back in healthy human, World Journal of Acupuncture – Moxibustion, Volume 23, Issue 3,2013,Pages 50-52,
