A trigger point is a place where your muscles have knotted up. Because the muscles contract severely at these points, the pain from a trigger point can spread to the muscles around it and you can develop more trigger points if you don't treat them as they develop. Self-massage is an easy way to manage knotted muscles.
Instructions
1. Locate your trigger points so you know where to massage. Usually, you're able to feel a trigger point just by moving your fingers along a muscle until you feel an especially taut area. Keep moving along this tightness until you find the spot that's especially tender to your touch. If you move over a recently developed trigger point, the muscle twitches, but chronic trigger points just feel tight.
2. Focus on a single pressure point at a time when you do your self-massage. This helps relieve the stress on related trigger points, making them easier to treat.
3. Feel your muscle to determine the direction of the fibers. If you can determine the direction, stroke the muscle in that direction with your fingertips or thumbs. Use short strokes down the entire length of the muscle, covering it just once. If you can't determine the direction, move to the next step.
4. Zero in on the trigger pain with a kneading, circular massage stroke. Use enough pressure that you experience mild discomfort in the muscle, but not so much that you experience real pain.
5. Leave the pressure point alone after you massage it with about twelve kneading strokes. Return to it later in the day, using the same massage process. Trigger points respond better to frequent treatment than they do to extended treatment.
6. Move on to the next trigger point if you have multiple ones that you want to treat with massage.
Tags: determine direction, trigger point, trigger points, pressure point, that experience, trigger point