That tight muscle may not need to be stretched...

It's 11am and you're at your desk working, but you notice a tight knot in between your shoulder blades that starts giving you a dull, nagging pain. 
You remember this rhomboid stretch you saw on YouTube so you do it and the knot feels better, thank goodness!

Now, it's 2pm, the nagging knot is back. You stretch again, it's gone again, or is it? Who knows, but you just know it feels better again. 

4pm rolls around and its back again?! You think to yourself, WTF?! I've stretched so much, but this thing keeps coming back.

What gives?

Well, those upper back muscles that have the knot in them probably don't actually need to be stretched out.
In fact, if you think about your posture and how your shoulders are rounded forward while you're working at a computer or on your phone it means that your rhomboids and other upper back muscles are already stretched out all day.

If you want to help them feel better, they don't need more stretching, they need to be strengthened!

When a muscle is over-stretched and/or weak it will tend to go into spasm and cause those knots you feel. This is a protective mechanism and a muscle's last-ditch effort to create tension to do the job its supposed to do. 

So how can you get rid of those knots for good instead of battling them all day, everyday?

Start strengthening them!

I like to use the rhomboids (the muscles in between your shoulder blades) as an example because almost everyone has experience those pesky upper back knots, but this phenomenon happens all throughout the body.

All you have to do to correct your problem is figure out what muscle is the one with the painful knot or tender spot and find an exercise to strengthen it. After a couple weeks of strengthening, those knots should feel much better.

If in fact you do have a painful rhomboid knot, here is an option for strengthening it so give it a shot.

Next time you have a tender spot or painful knot and stretching it out isn't helping it, try strengthening it instead!