What is a muscle knot, why does it happen and what you can do to relieve it.

Do you ever have a dull, achy pain in your body and when you try to feel where it is coming from , you feel a hard , sensitive area where you press. It may feel like a hard, round like nodule in the muscle or the muscle might feel rope-like and very tight.

If you press on that spot, you may experience the same pain that you have been having or you may feel the pain or sensation travelling to another area ( for instance, down the arm or up into the head).

What you have found is called a trigger point or what people refer to as a "knot".

WHAT IS IT?

A trigger point or Myofascial Trigger point is described as:

“A highly irritable spot in skeletal muscle that is associated with a hypersensitive palpable nodule in a taut band” –Travell and Simons

So basically an irritating, tender spot in a tight muscle that feels like a hard pea and when pressed it causes referred pain ( pain felt else where)

They are actually small areas of tightly contracted muscle (micro-cramp/micro-contraction).

WHAT CAUSES THEM

•Repetitive overuse -doing the same movement over and over

•Sustained loading-heavy lifting

•Poor posture

•In-activity for long periods-desk job

•Emotional stress - tensing ones muscles due to stress or anxiety

•Direct injury, strain, break, fall or twist

•Any type of trauma, physical or emotional

WHAT YOU CAN DO YOURSELF TO RELIEVE IT

Treating your trigger points yourself is very rewarding and self-empowering, especially when you feel like you are at your wits end with the pain.

Best practice is to locate the tender area either by using your fingers or thumbs if it is an easy to reach area. If it isn't , then a tennis ball up against a wall comes in handy.

Once you have located the spot, place enough pressure on it that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, but not wincing in pain. You want to be able to breathe through it.

Sustain that pressure for 10-12 second and then release.

This is then repeated twice more.

It is best to heat the muscle/s up prior to trigger point work. So you can apply heat on the area for 10min before or perform warm-up exercises.

Start off working on a few trigger points at a time, concentrating on the ones that mimic the pain you have been feeling . You may need to search a wider area around where the pain is felt, due to the fact that that is more likely a referred pain and the source ( main trigger point) lies else where.

It is also a good idea to have a treatment from a therapist who is knowledgeable in trigger point therapy or myofascial release and can help to pinpoint and treat the trigger points causing the problem.

#triggerpointtherapy #massage