You’re in a pose—Incline Plane, Supine Bridge with Extension, even just Standing Mountain—and suddenly, your muscles start to shake.
You’re not moving. You’re not holding a weight.
So what’s happening?
You’re not failing.
You’re waking up.
This kind of shaking isn’t weakness—it’s a sign your body is reintegrating.
And to understand why, we need to talk about two often-misunderstood systems: tonic and phasic muscles.
🔍 Tonic vs. Phasic Muscles—What You Need to Know
Your muscular system is broadly divided into two categories:
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Tonic muscles are your deep stabilizers. They’re close to the bone, built for endurance, and always “on” to some degree. Their job is to maintain posture, resist gravity, and create a baseline of support.
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Phasic muscles are your movers. They generate power and speed. They fire when you sprint, throw, pull, or lift—and then they shut off.
But this system loses balance when movement patterns are off due to injury, stress, disuse, or compensation.
Tonic muscles start to underperform or hold tension inefficiently, and phasic muscles pick up the slack.
That’s when you start to see tight hamstrings, aching traps, flared ribs, or a low back that never seems to calm down.
None of it is random.
🤯 Can a Muscle Be Tight and Weak?
Yes.
That’s what most people are dealing with.
Tonic muscles, in particular, can become hypertonic (always “on”) but fail to engage with real strength or control.
This is why someone can feel strong in a high-intensity workout but struggle to stabilize their pelvis or shoulders during a basic alignment pose.
They’re strong in the wrong places and weak in the ones that matter most.
đź’Ą So Why Do You Shake?
When you get into a precise alignment-based position, you’re not just “holding a pose.”
You’re asking your nervous system to fire muscles that may have been dormant for years.
That shaking is the deep postural system reactivating—the muscles closest to the spine, hips, ribs, and feet being asked to support you again.
Not through bracing or gripping but through actual, functional tension.
And this is where so much of the healing begins.
It’s not just about stretching or strengthening—it’s about restoring your body’s ability to organize itself intelligently.
You’re not just unwinding tight muscles.
You’re re-mapping how your entire system distributes force, support, and awareness.
🧠Want to Go Deeper?
In our Coach’s Lab, available exclusively inside the new MBG App (launching in just a few days), you’ll find in-depth education on tonic vs. phasic systems, how to assess them in real-time, and how to apply this knowledge to your own training or your work with clients.
This is essential information for anyone who:
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Keeps experiencing recurring pain in the same area
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Feels “tight” no matter how much they stretch
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Struggles with posture, instability, or movement plateaus
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Wants to retrain their system truly—not just patch it together
You’ll learn how to observe and shift patterns hiding in plain sight.
Final Takeaway
The shake you feel in those poses?
That’s not your body breaking down.
It’s your nervous system relearning how to hold you together.
When we stop fighting tension and start understanding where it comes from, we finally give the body a chance to do what it was built to do—support us from the inside out.
Jonny and Jessica Hinds
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