Muscle knots

Does anyone else suffer from muscle knots? I have to go to a massage therapist once a month to get them worked out. She has never seen anything like it. I get them in the arm where the bullseye rash showed up during treatment. The same arm with my very painful shoulder joint.

I get them elsewhere, but my left arm has at times been so stiff I could hardly raise it. Just wondering. Why would this keep happening?

Glad I'm not the only one. They are painful when they are being worked out. Some feel like burrs or stones with Sharp edges

Post Edited (Purple Tulip) : 1/11/2016 9:25:43 PM (GMT-7)

Everywhere - at the muscle attachments at the base of the skull (both sides), down the muscles on each side of the neck, all the muscles in the shoulders and shoulder blades, thighs, calves, butt muscles and other weird places.

Massage Therapy can help as long as you don't use too much pressure. But I still found it to be the most torturous thing I have ever done.

Physical therapy doesn't work if you use the "no pain, no gain" attitude. You have to know how far you can push and then stop just before that point. Most PT don't like that and don't believe that it makes everything worse. The first person that I had PT with didn't believe me when I said it made me so sick that I was unable to go into work that day (it was a 7am appt). They said "but it was better afterward?" No.

One thing you can do on your own is to take a tennis ball and place it in a man's long sock, then position it over the knot (using the sock to pull it into the right place). Then lean back so that the ball uses your weight to push on the knot. You can control the amount of pressure so it is easier to make sure that you don't overdo.

Another possibility is a TENS unit. It is a set of pads that you connect to your body with wires that plug into the unit. You can then pick different settings. The settings determine the type of electronic stimulation and frequency, length, etc. It sends an electronic pulse that tenses the muscle, then stops. So the muscle contracts normally but just at your control.

The theory is our muscles (those of us that have that as a issue) are in a constant state of on. So the TENS unit causes the muscle to contract and release. Doing this for a short period of time, can help unlock the knots. You can get a TENS unit on Amazon. If you try this, DO NOT put the leads on your neck near the muscles that might cover the major blood vessels. You would not want to cut off that blood flow.

Kim

It does seem to differ among us though.

My knots / adhesions only heal with the most pressure applied I can safely stand.

Then I do ultra sound after. My adhesions are very tight. It is working. Hard, fiberous areas are better, but lots more work to do.

Medium massage only feels better for one day on me.

I have saved about $1500-$2000 per year learning this for myself. But if I'm less successful in an area, I go back for more triggerpoint release or Active Release Technique.

Also made my own pressure point tools, looking at the many types available.

I first learned all this from a hand/arm-shludr/neck manual tripper point therapist. Insc only pain 6 visits, and she handed me the triggerpoint release workbook, "go learn" so I did. Best pain advice I ever got.

Learn about "refered pain" if you dont already know what it is.

When you repeadedly poke around at a sore area and get no lasting re****s, its usually pain refered to that area, but caused somewhere else.

So start pokeing in adjacent areas or even opposite areas to see if the tightness diminishes. Its real detective work, time consumong, but when you figure it out, its great.