Trigger Points: Are They in You?

Photo by a2gemma
Article by Rich Poley

Debilitating Little Buggers
Trigger points weaken muscles, reduce range of motion, and drain endurance. While you may not have heard of them, you’ve experienced them. Everyone who’s had muscle pain and stiffness has experienced trigger points. They are the tender spots or knots that grow in your muscles. They’ve been written about in thousands of articles in medical journals and authoritatively described in Myofacial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, by David G. Simons, M.D., Janet G. Travell, M.D., and Lois S. Simons, P.T.
You’ve seen the long-term effects of untreated trigger points in the elderly, their bodies twisted and reactions slowed. Gradually, over many years, knotted muscle fibers reduce people’s range of motion and sap their strength until they have trouble getting out of a chair. Decrepitude is thought to be part of the normal aging process. When caused by trigger points, which it usually is, it’s preventable. Trigger points are the most easily treatable significant muscle problem that you’re certain to face.

Tiny Knots
Medical doctors believe trigger points form naturally as a result of muscle abuse. Over and under use of muscles causes the ultra thin fibers that make-up muscles to tangle into the tiny knots that are trigger points. The knots cause muscles to shorten and tense.
Trigger points are of two types: latent and active. Both cause all the muscle dysfunctions described above but only active trigger points spontaneously emit pain. Active triggers are relatively rare but everyone suffers latent ones. While trigger points appear naturally, they also disappear naturally when your muscles are stretched.

Stretching Them
Here’s the rule: elongating muscles removes trigger points. Gentle natural stretching that’s part of normal daily activities eliminates most small triggers. Yoga, Pilates, and fitness classes resolve many of the more stubborn ones. Unfortunately, the toughest trigger points persist and require a more precise controlled stretch that comes from pressing directly on the muscle. This form of massage, known as trigger point therapy, elongates the muscle and removes the knot.

Do it Yourself Trigger Point Massage
The good news is that trigger point therapy is easy to do. With a little knowledge and the right massage tool you can restore muscle strength, flexibility, and endurance to your own body. You can remove all your latent trigger points simply by pressing them. Ninety-percent of trigger point therapy is just pressing muscle tissue. You can tell you’ve hit one when the spot you’ve compressed is exquisitely tender. Stay with it for about five breaths or until the pain subsides.

Pressing Them
Yes, trigger points are in you. If you want to improve muscle performance and avoid the physical frailty of old-age, you have to get them out and keep getting them out. Fortunately, it’s easy. Just press them and they’re gone. Doing so, improves the way you look, feel, and perform.

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Check out my latest YouTube video: Balls On Quads Massage: Do It While You View It. It's fun action. The intent of the video is not to teach you anything but to help you to feel something, to help you feel better when you finish than when you started. If it does that it has succeeded, if not it has failed. Give it a try let me know how it does.

Stretching It: The Truth about Stretching

Stretching by Tobyotter

The perceived benefits of stretching are that they make your muscles more flexible and will protect you from injury. The truth is that they do neither. According to a recent New York Times article, old fashioned stretching just doesn’t deliver the goods. When the Times talks about stretching it’s talking about the kind of stretching you probably learned as a kid or at the urging of a coach or from a book on stretching. It’s the kind of stretching that you felt obligated to do but didn’t continue because you didn’t feel it did you much good. It was generally painful, unpleasant, and failed to make you more flexible. The good news is you were right to stop because it didn’t work.

This old fashioned stretching was over sold before it was understood.

New York Times reporter Gretchen Reynolds wrote an interesting piece on stretching Phys Ed: How Necessary Is Stretching? If you don’t have time to read it in its entirety, here are some of the highlights.

Women are more flexible than men.

Flexibility is not “a cornerstone of health and fitness.”

“It’s been drummed into people that they should stretch, stretch, stretch — that they have to be flexible,” says Dr. Duane Knudson, teacher of biomechanics at Texas State University in San Marcos, and an expert on flexibility and muscle reaction. “But there’s not much scientific support for that.”

The newest science indicates that excess flexibility is undesirable, unnecessary, and unachievable.

“To a large degree, flexibility is genetic,” says Dr. Malachy McHugh, director of research for the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital and an authority on flexibility. Either you’re born supple or stiff. “Some small portion’ of each person’s flexibility ‘is adaptable,’ McHugh says, “but it takes a long time and a lot of work to get even that small adaptation. It’s a bit depressing, really.”

Stretching after a run or workout won’t lengthen your muscles making you more flexible, nor will it increase your range of motion.

There are two pieces to stretching a muscle, according to Dr. McHugh: first the muscle, second the mind. It’s not your muscle that becomes more flexible over time, it’s your mind and the message it sends to the muscle telling it to stretch a little further. The structure of the muscle will not change but your tolerance to pain will. Thus the illusion of a gain in flexibility with stretching, is just that an illusion. “You’ll start to develop a tolerance” for the pain of stretching, Dr. McHugh says. The fact that you can hold a stretch longer over time is a function of your mind accepting the stretch and not your muscles or tendons growing permanently longer. Sadly even this illusion of flexibility is fleeting says Dr. McHugh.

Changing the physical structure of a muscle takes months of hard painful work and sessions lasting hours. Still the changes you can expect are small.

And for most of us there is no reason to. “Flexibility is a functional thing,” Dr. Knudson says. “You only need enough range of motion in your joints to avoid injury. More is not necessarily better.”

IT Band Self-Massage

Massaging your iliotibial bands can be a big help if you run, cycle, or are experiencing pain in your knees.
The IT band lives on the lateral portion of your thigh and runs from just below your knee to your pelvis. It’s made of tough connective tissue and muscle. The muscle is in the middle.
When it’s working right your IT band stabilizes your hip and knee. When it’s not working right you might experience pain along the outer portion of your knee. IT band syndrome is the overuse injury often suffered by runners and sometimes cyclists.
Massage can help. To help you give it a try I've posted a youtube video: IT Band Massage Quickie: Do It while You View It. I'm planning to post a couple more, a longer version with massage tools and another with the IT band stretched a little.
Another IT band massage video I like is this one by Art Riggs. If you're experiencing problems in your legs and you think it might be related to your IT bands this video is worth watching. And finally this one by Massagenerd is also worth checking out.

Quadriceps Massage

If you've got quads, you'll benefit from massaging them. But this massage is particularly helpful if you run (especially up hills), cycle, ski, board, play soccer, practice karate, squat, or jump rope.

Your quadriceps are a muscle group made up of four distinct muscles which live in the front of your thigh. The four muscles are rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, and vastus intermedius. But you can call them all Bob. They're probably the strongest leanest muscles in your body. They straighten your knee when getting up from a seat, walking, running, cycling or any other activity that requires you to straighten your leg. So if your knees are a problem, the problem may be in your quads. Massage them regularly and your knee may feel better, but your quads definitely will. Try it: Quad Massage: Do It while You View It.

Naked Aerobic Foot Massage

Clothing is not at option. Check out this new youtube video Naked Aerobic Foot Massage: Do It while You View It. It's intended to be a workout and foot massage, but mostly a workout. You can do it at your desk in about 2 minutes. And it really can get aerobic. Try ten reps with a minute recovery. This video is meant to be part of a series of aerobic foot massage videos. I posted the first of the series, Aerobic Foot Massage, in June. Clothing was optional in that one. Hope you like them.

Therapeutic Foot Massage and Exercise

I hope you'll try my new foot massage video, Foot Massage with 2 Tennis Balls: Do It while You View It, for foot therapy and a workout. I used it to treat my neuroma and cramping in my feet. The cramping in my feet had been a problem my whole life. The neuroma had been bothering me on and off for a few years but grew much worse in the last six months. And now both problems are gone. In addition to its therapeutic value, this video can be a pretty good workout. Do it fast, hard, and often. It'll give you an aerobic workout at your desk and get the circulation going in your feet no matter how cold your office gets.