Benefits of Trigger Point Therapy
When you’re experiencing some severe muscle pain, it can be almost debilitating. You can feel sore, uncomfortable, and even have difficulty moving around.
Whether you have some stress from work or regular daily life, or you’re an avid runner, we all experience some aching muscles from time to time.
It could manifest as a general soreness, some muscle knots, or tender, swollen muscles. No matter how they occur, you need to relax that muscle soreness.
One of the best ways to treat sore and achy muscles is trigger point therapy.
What Are Trigger Points?
First and foremost, what is a trigger point?
Trigger points are tight, hyperirritable spots found on your tight bans of muscle. They’re also referred to as “knots” a lot of the time, and they hurt a lot. A lot a lot.
If you know that your muscle is sore, like your shoulder, you can feel around a bit. You’ll know you’ve found a trigger point when you feel pain shoot through the surrounding muscle area. It feels like an electric shock to everything around the point.
It can also make the rest of the muscle feel suddenly fatigued. These shots of pain are referred to as referred pain.
Causes of Trigger Points
There are a few different things that can cause these trigger points in our muscles. Here are a few.
Acute Trauma or Repetitive Trauma
If you’ve had an injury or have worked out a particular muscle too much, these tears in your muscle fibers cause your muscle to overcompensate when it builds back up. This leads to those tight clumps of muscle fibers that cause so much pain.
· Dehydration
A common cause of the formation of trigger points is dehydration. Muscle fibers are supposed to have space in between them and that space is caused by the muscles being hydrated.
When they’re dehydrated, your muscle fibers become stuck together and tangled up, cousin a trigger point to form.
· Sedentary Lifestyle
Lastly, a sedentary lifestyle can cause trigger points to form. Your muscles need to have the opportunity to stretch and strengthen to stay healthy and limber.
What Is Trigger Point Therapy?
Now we get into what trigger point therapy is.
Trigger point therapy is the process of squeezing and releasing the tight clumps of muscle to release the pressure and tightness of trigger points.
Different Forms of Trigger Point Therapy
There are a few different ways that you can get the benefits of trigger point therapy. Here are the most common ones.
· Acupuncture
Acupuncture is the process of sticking needles into the trigger points. These needles improve circulation and provide acute pressure on the trigger points to allow the tight muscles to release and recover.
This is typically done by a professional because of, you know, the needles. That’s why you have another needle-free option.
· Tennis Ball, Softball or Massage Gun
A tennis ball, softball, or massage gun is a great way to get the benefits of trigger point therapy without having to leave the house. But just how does it work?
A tennis ball, softball, or massage gun can provide targeted therapy for your achy muscles.
It uses something called percussive therapy. Percussive therapy works by repeatedly punching one spot of muscle, relieving tension, and increasing the blood flow to the area of muscle.
It only takes a few minutes to get pain relief, improved circulation, and a better range of motion in your sore, tight muscles. Many people use it all over their muscles for a quicker recovery time and less soreness.
But what does that mean for your trigger points?
What A Tennis ball, softball, or massage gun can Do with Trigger Point Therapy
Tennis Balls, Softballs or Massage guns work not only to relax and release your muscles in general, but they can also provide more targeted trigger point therapy. This trigger point therapy works even better than general muscle massage, providing the next level of relief.
Here’s how.
Increase Blood Flow
When you get a trigger point developing on your muscle band, it cuts off circulation. This lack of circulation can cause painful inflammation, and lack of circulation, in general, is not a great thing.
Pulsating directly onto the trigger point, a tennis ball, softball, or massage gun allows better circulation to get into the whole muscle, allowing more oxygen to get into the muscle. That oxygen can help the whole muscle heal faster, releasing the trigger point.
Provide Pain Relief
What’s the real problem associated with trigger points? The pain, of course.
A tennis ball, softball, or massage gun provides the pressure directly on the trigger point, allowing for a great release of that tight knot of muscle. Though using a tennis ball, softball, or massage gun does hurt a lot at the moment, it ultimately releases that intense pain that nothing else can.
Trigger points are tough to release since they form over time. They cause pain throughout a large surface area than just where they are. You could massage your trigger point just with your hand, but that’s not going to get deep enough into the muscle tissue to do any serious healing.
Hydrate Muscle Tissue
Remember that increased circulation we mentioned earlier? That provides more than just better oxygen to the trigger point.
Increasing the blood flow essentially drenches the muscle in nutrients. This hydration allows those muscle fibers to break apart and stay where they’re supposed to. The nutrients can give your muscle more of those healthy healing tools it needs to repair itself.
Improve Range of Motion
Trigger points and knots can keep your muscles stuck and stiff. It can literally make it hard to move your body around.
When you use a tennis ball, softball, or massage gun on your trigger points, you not only make your muscles feel more relaxed and less painful, you also make it easier to move around. The stiffness is gone.
The combination of increased blood flow with muscle relaxation and better nutrients in your muscles promotes faster healing and pain relief.
Less pain means more movement. If you’re tired of feeling stuck with your cramped muscles, try giving yourself trigger point therapy.