Trigger Points and Booty Ball Massage

If you want to run faster Booty Ball Massage is your ticket, here’s why:

Over time everyone, you, me, President-elect Obama develop knots in our muscles that reduce our strength. These knots are called trigger points. (For the extensive scientific evidence supporting this theory this see the two volume treatise by Travell and Simons Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual . In a more accessible form see Claire Davies book The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook.

Trigger points develop spontaneously in muscles all over our bodies. Pressing on them through massage and other forms of body work releases them. That’s one of the reasons massage can be painful.

Until a trigger point is released the muscle in which it lives is weakened and other muscles must do the inhibited muscle’s work which weakens those muscles as well. You’ve probably seen elderly people whose old bent bodies can barely function. It’s usually not old age per se that’s crippling them but the accumulation of unreleased trigger points.

Releasing trigger points is easy to do when you’re young and relatively healthy. All you have to do is press on them with enough force to release them which can be painful. As a matter of fact that’s how you know you’ve found one, it emits what has been described as an “exquisite tenderness” when pressed. Yikes!

Anyway one big place these trigger points live until they’re released is your butt. Your glutes are the largest muscles in your body and unless you’re massaging them regularly trigger points are growing in them and weakening them and the surrounding muscles. This of course reduces glute and leg strength which reduces your running speed.

One easy way to release trigger points in your glutes is to allow your body weight to do it while you’re sitting at work or watching a video. That’s why I created the booty ball massage video now on YouTube. Watch the video, do booty ball massage and your trigger points will disappear like a fist when you open your hand. You’ll feel better and run faster.