I have tight calves. It’s my thing. It’s been true as long as I can remember. I played volleyball competitively, and I had the tightest calves the trainers had seen. I wore that like a badge of honour, because otherwise it was just annoying. It didn’t matter how many minutes I stretched my calves before or after the daily 2 hour practice, they just stayed tight.
One day at practice, I hit a ball out of bounds for what seemed like the millionth time. WHY, I asked my coach, does it keep going out??? His reply stuck with me. He told me that the ball doesn’t think, and that it was going exactly where I had told it to go with the force I applied with my hand. I had to admit that made a lot of sense.
Approximately 15 years later, I had a HUGE aha moment, and those two paragraphs above became related. I realized that I don’t “HAVE” tight calves. I move in a way that causes my calves to be tight.
Sit (or stand!) with that for a minute.
I would stretch my calves for so.many.minutes. And then I would play two hours of calf-tightening volleyball, stretch them for so.many.more.minutes, and proceed to perform 21.75 hours of calf tightening activity until my next round of so.many.minutes of stretching (I count sleep in my calf-tightening column since those hours were spent in my “natural” plantar-flexed state – aka the opposite of a calf-stretch). I was calf-stretching 30 minutes a day to offset the other 23.5 hours of calf-tightening. My calves didn’t have a chance. “It was nothing personal”, I’m sure they’d tell me if they could talk, “we were just responding to the force you applied with all of your movements.” Hmmm.
I still have tight calves. Except I don’t really. I have calf muscles that are responding exactly as they should given the mechanical input they receive. I’ve stopped taking it personally. I don’t blame them for being tight the way I used to. The feeling of tightness is a signal and I’m learning to pay attention so I can adjust the input they’re receiving. It takes some effort and will take time (remember, my calves have been tight for “as long as I can remember”). This is how change happens.
You probably have an area you could describe as “tight” (feel free to share in the comments!). Here’s your homework (sorry, it’s the teacher in me!): Pick a “tight” area of your body and see if you can figure out a movement habit that is reinforcing the tightness of that area. I’ve deliberately not given examples in this post, so what I’m asking here might be tough to answer without more information! Don’t worry if you can’t come up with anything yet—I’m planning a what’s-making-my-calves-tight-and-what-I’m-doing-about-it blog post and that might give you some ideas. Stay tuned!