How Massage Can Help Myofascial Pain Syndrome

Lately, a couple questions that have arose in my practice are why do muscles knot up, what is the cause and how can it be prevented?

Muscles have fibers that can get intertwined. Along with the muscles is connective tissue. When connective tissue balls up and the issue is not immediately addressed, the knot builds and builds until the muscle becomes effected. Take the analogy of a snowman. To build a snowman, one needs to start with a little ball and roll that ball of snow until it is a massive snowball. It's the same with a knot in your muscle. 

The clinical term for this is called Myofascial pain syndrome. In myofascial pain syndrome, pressure on sensitive points in your muscles (trigger points) causes pain in seemingly unrelated parts of your body. This is called referred pain. Referring pain is when your wrist hurts, but the reason your wrist hurts is a pinched nerve in your elbow. Trigger points in a muscle are generally in the belly of a muscle and are the spots that hurt if one presses on them. 

The cause of knots are from overworking the muscles by lifting too much weights at the gym, moving furniture, physical jobs or just plain getting out of bed wrong. I think we have all got out of bed ready to start the day and get a sharp pain somewhere. 

So how do you prevent knots in your muscles? There are a couple ways. Exercise is always good to strengthen the muscles. For example, a hernia is formed when the abdominal walls are weak and muscle fibers can sneak through. It's the same thing with a knot. If muscles are moveable and can freely move, connective tissue cannot ball up forming a knot. 

Myofascial pain syndrome is painful. Not in particular muscles, but a lot of time, from head to toe. How massage would help is by going into the belly of the muscle to help release the balled-up tissue and muscle fibers. When the tissue is balled up, this is the time when the muscle becomes inflamed around the connective tissue. Stripping the muscle or even doing cross fiber friction to loosen up the muscles helps tremendously for reducing pain, in regards to MPS. Stripping the muscle consists of taking both thumbs and running it up the muscle from the insertion of the muscle to the origin of the muscle. Cross fiber friction is when a therapist goes over the fibers with one thumb and then crosses with the other thumb in a braiding-like motion. Both techniques help elongate the muscle to returning to its normal state, relieving any pain one may have.