Why You Feel Like A Bag Of Spanners After 35

Weird things happen as we get older.

For example,I can’t fathom why hair insists on sprouting from my eyebrows and nose faster than prime Usain Bolt, whilst simultaneously disappearing from the patch at the back of my head where I’d actually like it to be.

What does evolution think is about to happen to me that means oversized eyebrows and bushy nostrils are needed?

More to the point of this blog…

why does our body start to hurt, ache, feel tight and lethargic as we age?

Is it normal to dread sneezing whilst tying your laces in case it blows your back out for a week?

As yet I have no solution to the hairy eyebrow mystery but I can explain what is happening with all the aches, twinges and dodgy joints.

Why Do Random Injuries Happen?

Let’s be clear, it’s not your age that is the problem.

It’s tempting to feel a twinge and just say “I’m getting old”, then spend the next 40, 50 or 60 years you have on this mortal coil moaning about how crap getting older is.

We’ve probably heard our older generations rattle that line off hundreds of times over the years, so when we start making “oof” noises everytime we sit down, it’s an easy line to fall back on.

However.

You’re not a battery that wears down after 40 years.

Imagine you have a penchant for watches or nice cars.

If you bought one brand new, straight from the dealer you’d expect your new toy to run smoothly for a good few years.

But if you bought vintage, you’d want to know the service history of your purchase right?

A watch from 1980 would have had a few years to pick up dirt or have problems with the mechanism. But if it’s been serviced and cared for by an expert, you’ll be confident of getting many years of use out of it.

Your body is kinda similar.

Years of doing similar activities (whether that’s windsurfing or sofa surfing) is going to take a toll on how you move and how your body is loaded.

To make this easier to understand the joint by joint approach is a good place to start and help you understand your body can feel a bit grumpy.

The Joint By Joint Approach

Some of the joints in your body are designed to be very mobile.

Think of your shoulders and hips.

Those suckers can go forwards, backwards, to the sides and even in a circle.

Others have less movement but more stability.

Think of your elbows and knees.

They bend and straighten. 

But if they bend too far or start going in a circle you’d have a bit of an issue.

Take a quick look at the image below and notice that mobile joints and stable joints tend to alternate through the body.

Skeleton image showing how mobile joints often alternate with stable joints in the human body.

This is the cause of just about every injury, pain and niggle you will ever experience.

I’m not kidding or exaggerating…this is it.

When you understand this part, it’ll be easier to find the correct solution to help you move and feel better.

The body is a problem solving master.

Look again at the image, do you notice how “stable” and “mobile” joints tend to alternate?

If you become tight or lose movement at a mobile joint, you still need to move around.

The body solves this by “borrowing” movement from a stable joint.

As an example…

Have you ever been told you have tight hips?

As we walk or run around, if we’ve lost the ability to extend our hip (have the leg move behind us).

The body will try to fix this by “borrowing” movement from the lower back.

The pelvis will be dumped forwards to make it easier for the thigh bones to extend.

The pay off for this is excessive bending and loading through our lower spine, an area designed to be stable.

How you move will load the tissues in a way they weren’t designed for.

Think of this as living on your credit card if you’re skint.

It gets you by for a bit, but at a great cost.

With the credit card you eventually get a bill that brings a tear to your eye.

With your lower back you become scared to use it as the muscles start to grumble and feel tight or the discs suffer damage.

This type of compensation happens throughout the body.

If I had a pound for every client who complained of RSI in their wrists, only to realise the problem was at their shoulder, which affected how their arm moved and caused discomfort at their wrist…

…well…

…I’d have more pounds than I do now, maybe even enough to buy a coffee at London prices.

Let’s put this idea in a gym setting.

Many of us over 35 have reduced movement at our shoulders.

We can lift our hands overhead, but only by extending through the lower back.

(You can try this now, with straight arms, lift your hands in front of you and go overhead.

See if you can get your biceps in line with your ears without your lower back arching and compensating.

It’s likely your shoulder mechanics are a bit restricted…

…imagine having this restriction and heading to the gym to do some shoulder pressing.

Because of the restriction in movement, the bones, muscles and connective tissues can’t move through their proper motions.

Instead we have tissues bashing and rubbing at each other, only now with a big ol’ weight added on that compresses everything together.

Do that enough and your shoulders will feel like garbage.

The only exception to this is if you’ve been whalloped.

If you’ve had an 18 stone Rugby player smash you, a car bump you or you’ve fallen down some stairs drunk then obviously that’s your cause there.

But for everyone who has a bad back, shoulder or a knee that predicts changes in weather…understanding this is huge to understanding your pain…which in turn helps you build a solution that works.

Enter The Nervous System

Hopefully it makes sense why joints start to feel grumpy.

But why do we get “tight”?

Isn’t that a clear sign we should all just sign up for yoga?

Steady there before you grab your joss sticks.

A tight muscle isn’t the same thing as a short muscle…

…I know that sounds bloody weird, but the feeling of tightness is usually caused by your nervous system.

A muscle that has actually become shorter and lost sarcomeres (the building block of a muscle) is really, really rare.

The tightness you feel is usually a muscle that is either overly long or in a very weak position.

Do you remember the last time you stepped out on an icy day?

Think of the days after it has snowed and the white wonderland has turned into a grey slush and walking down the street is a constant battle to not end up on your backside.

On those days do you run down the road? Dance and skip your way home?

Or do you take smaller steps?

Constantly feeling tense as you battle to stay upright?

The instability of the surface causes you to tense and tighten.

The body does exactly the same around your joints.

If there’s a weakness or instability around a joint the nervous system will cause the muscles to tighten up as a way to provide the missing stability.

This comes with the cost of losing the ability to move freely at that joint.

The hamstrings are a great example of this.

They run from just below your knee and attach onto the bottom of your pelvis…as you can see in the pic.

How the hamstrings attach to the pelvis and behind the knees

If the pelvis tipped forward, so the top of the pelvis pointed a little more forward, that would cause the hamstrings to lengthen.

The body won’t want your pelvis to tip too far forwards so it will add some tension to your hamstrings to try and hold everything in place.

Suddenly, you realise your hamstrings feel a bit tight.

The logical thing to do would be to add some more stretching to your life.

But the thing is…

…your hamstrings are already lengthened…

…stretching them further is just feeding further into the problem.

Why Do Joints Become Unstable

Finally we get to the big question.

We know now that joints become beaten up when they’re forced to move excessively.

We know we feel tight because the nervous system is trying to protect these overworked areas.

But…

…why does any of this need to happen in the first place?

And why does this happen as we get older?

One part of the conundrum is gravity.

Trying not to sound like an old hippy, but “it really brings you down maaan”.

Our posture is partly a representation of how we cope with the forces acting on us daily. As ever, the body is trying to look after you.

If you end up with a pelvis that tilts forwards, you’ll naturally readjust the position of your spine in order to maintain your centre of gravity.

If the rest of you moved forwards with your pelvis then you’d topple forwards and spend your entire day falling on your mush…so you wouldn’t look half as amazing as you currently do.

Another part of the conundrum is from deep within you.

This one takes a bit more explaining so there will be a post specifically about this coming soon.

But in short we have a bias towards the right side of our body.

Outside we look evenly balanced with (most of us) having the same number of arms and legs on each side.

But internally we have more “stuff” on our right side.

A liver, larger diaphragm attachments and many other parts of our anatomy mean that if we were cut in half from head to toe, the right side of our body would weigh more than our left.

This in turn acts with our old friend gravity to gradually affect the way we move and pull us more towards the right side of our body.

This affects the way our hips move (there is a tendency to have more internal rotation in the right hip and more external rotation at the left).

There’s a similar story at the shoulders.

This bias affects how every part of our body moves.

Does Age Mean Having More Injuries

As gravity and our own internal movement biases are two key factors that determine how we move.

And how we move determines the compensations our body develops.

And the compensations are the factors that often cause injury pain and niggles.

Then it makes sense that the longer we’re lucky enough to live, the greater the probability we’re going to have some problems to manage.

If…and this is a monumentally massive if…we don’t intervene in the process.

This is the part of the post where you’re expecting me to give you the solution.

The map coordinates of the fountain of youth.

That would be a huge ask considering all the variables that affect how we move.

Instead I just wanted to show you that pain/niggles/feeling old isn’t necessarily the result of us “wearing out” like a pound shop battery.

Rather it’s more like the interactions of our genes and being under gravity. 

For more ideas on how to manage this you’ll find more detailed information…