Muscle tension probably also is a direct result of stress. Keeping muscles tensed makes you ready to move. Being ready to move is necessary in most evolutionary cases of stress.
Muscle tension isn’t a zero or one; muscle control signals are on a continuum. So the question is how much muscle tension and where; we always have muscle tension, even when asleep.
I do find the jamming hypothesis credible for some types of tension and situations, but it’s not the whole story.
The question of why some areas of the body develop more tension is an open one, and jamming signals is probably one cause. But there are other possible feedback loops that could connect some body parts to stress/tension.
How would that work? Muscle movement happens through changing a muscle from being untensed to the tensed state. You have more potential to move when your muscles are relaxed.
Excessive counter-tension would slow movement, yes. But muscles are usually maintaining some small level of tension. There’s not really a fully untensed state.
That said, I’m not actually sure that more counter-tension does speed up reaction times within normal ranges. There is such a thing as anticipatory muscle tension when an action is prepared, but that may be a by-product, not a functional way of speeding up reaction times. And I’m not sure it happens when no specific action is being prepared.
So I don’t know. If I’d thought a little harder about this, I’d have framed it as a hypothesis. Sorry!
Yes, but you are not moving by using all your muscles at once. The muscular-skeletal system is a complex set of levers, for a lever to be ready for activation by one set of muscle, it has to be primed by another set of muscle.
The simplest example is that you would not be able to use your leg muscles to walk if they untensed after each step, your legs would flop like wet noodles. Your leg needs to dynamically go through different tense patterns to remain rigid while your thighs, buttocks and calves to do the work of moving. Just keeping yourself vertical enough to walk requires constant dynamic tension (this can be easily tested by getting smashingly drunk).
Just keeping yourself vertical enough to walk requires constant dynamic tension (this can be easily tested by getting smashingly drunk).
That’s a bad test for the hypothesis. Getting drunk makes coordination harder with makes it hard to work. At the same time it doesn’t fully relax all muscles.
If you want to know how much muscle tension is required for a given muscle, the much better test would to go to a Alexander Technique teacher who trained to do that movement with minimal muscle tension and see how much muscle tension they exert.
Yes, and:
Muscle tension probably also is a direct result of stress. Keeping muscles tensed makes you ready to move. Being ready to move is necessary in most evolutionary cases of stress.
Muscle tension isn’t a zero or one; muscle control signals are on a continuum. So the question is how much muscle tension and where; we always have muscle tension, even when asleep.
I do find the jamming hypothesis credible for some types of tension and situations, but it’s not the whole story.
The question of why some areas of the body develop more tension is an open one, and jamming signals is probably one cause. But there are other possible feedback loops that could connect some body parts to stress/tension.
How would that work? Muscle movement happens through changing a muscle from being untensed to the tensed state. You have more potential to move when your muscles are relaxed.
Excessive counter-tension would slow movement, yes. But muscles are usually maintaining some small level of tension. There’s not really a fully untensed state.
That said, I’m not actually sure that more counter-tension does speed up reaction times within normal ranges. There is such a thing as anticipatory muscle tension when an action is prepared, but that may be a by-product, not a functional way of speeding up reaction times. And I’m not sure it happens when no specific action is being prepared.
So I don’t know. If I’d thought a little harder about this, I’d have framed it as a hypothesis. Sorry!
Yes, but you are not moving by using all your muscles at once. The muscular-skeletal system is a complex set of levers, for a lever to be ready for activation by one set of muscle, it has to be primed by another set of muscle.
The simplest example is that you would not be able to use your leg muscles to walk if they untensed after each step, your legs would flop like wet noodles. Your leg needs to dynamically go through different tense patterns to remain rigid while your thighs, buttocks and calves to do the work of moving. Just keeping yourself vertical enough to walk requires constant dynamic tension (this can be easily tested by getting smashingly drunk).
That’s a bad test for the hypothesis. Getting drunk makes coordination harder with makes it hard to work. At the same time it doesn’t fully relax all muscles.
If you want to know how much muscle tension is required for a given muscle, the much better test would to go to a Alexander Technique teacher who trained to do that movement with minimal muscle tension and see how much muscle tension they exert.