Muscle Tone, Posture and Balance: Key Concepts

Muscle Tone and Postural Motor Activity

Muscle tone: State of partial tension or muscle contraction that constitutes the background of postural and motor activity, in both its transitive and expressive aspects. Tone variations translate emotional and affective states.

Types of Muscle Tone

• Resting tone (basal).
• Postural (attitudinal) tone.
• Action tone.

Postural (anatomical) tone

Refers to the location and position of the different animated body parts and the muscles of the skeleton, responsible for the action opposing the result of gravity, whose translation in the form of balance we perceive in relation to spatial references.

Attitude

Following Castañer and Camerino, the significance is, in a broad or narrow consensus, visible tonic manifestations in the subject under study, in behavior and relationships (postures and gestures). Vial Boulch (1978-80) points out that in the study of postural tone variations, attention must be paid to the attitudes adopted, which depend on psychic reactions. Emotional and affective reactions translate into deep and stable or unstable tonic changes. Various affections are accompanied by consciousness of tonic changes; the various affections produce corresponding tonic variations, communicating changes in the muscles from one affective state to another.

Postural attitude

The previous definition of the concept "postural attitude" is only conditionally valid, as it depends on various factors (neurological, morphological and psychological). It means the form of personal balance, which may be fleeting or permanent, and based on spatial-temporal references that differ in each individual. It is often accompanied by gestures and positions. Attitude and posture are a significant manifestation of behavior; they represent a setting and, as such, the total body in relation to others, a form of adaptation predominantly driven by aspects.

Balance

From the physics perspective, balance means the mechanical condition in which all forces acting on the body have a resultant of 0. In physical education, balance is closely related to rebalancing: each movement corresponds to another that compensates for the previous instability.

Capacity to Assume and Sustain Body Positions

The capacity to control body posture against gravity, and to recover correct spacing after a destabilizing factor, is an intervention of the body. A stable center of gravity maintains the body in static situations or when displaced, or helps it against gravity.

Types of Balance

Balance rates can be distinguished in any motor exercise. We can distinguish:

• Reflex balance of static-type posture.
• Automatic balance: within motor activity, automated in daily life (for example, walking as continuous compensatory imbalance).
• Voluntary balance: applied to scheduled motor action.

Within voluntary balance, the following types are distinguished:

• Static: the ability to maintain a determined position without body displacement, with its segments in a predetermined position.
• Dynamic: the ability to maintain position while displacing, with constant postures and changes in position as the center of gravity shifts. It is stable when away from the verticality of the body and, after the balanced action, returns to the base of support.
• With objects: postural tonic-sports activities that balance a segment with respect to an object, which it tries to maintain. In physical education there is great interest in two aspects: static balance with objects and dynamic balance with objects.

Tonic activity is therefore the basis for different muscle activities. Maintaining posture involves maintaining variations of the initial position and involves tone. Holistic efforts are used to balance the segments of the body in position, with minimum and maximum support.

Emotional expression and body language (attitude, mimicry, movement qualities) are the plot of our movements, participating in all motor behaviors (balance, coordination, etc.).

Regulation of Tonic Activity

Regulation of tonic activity allows control of tonic and postural adjustments in movement, and must be measured in the subject so that it can resolve contractions that affect voluntary motor activity. Continuous adjustment of tone variations is possible through information from our sensory receptors. Therefore, good postural attitude education starts with sensory and perceptive education.

Factors Involved in Balance

Internal factors: balance control depends fundamentally on the same sensations involved.

• Proprioceptive: kinesthetic and vestibular.
• Exteroceptive: touch and sight.

A psychological scope related to fear and insecurity, with their connection, should also be added.

External factors: gravity

• Force: the centripetal force is defined as the force directed from outside toward the inside, which attracts bodies toward the center of the earth.
• Base of support: the surface on which the subject rests. Understand the points of support.
• Center of gravity: the point of application where force originates.
• Line of gravity: the vertical line through the center of gravity to the center of the earth. Balance exists when this line falls within the base of support.