Posts Tagged "muscle knots"

Muscle Knots- causes and how to fix them.

Posted by mark in Neck Pain Essentials | 0 comments

You should know that the major cause of neck pain is you. If you do not then i suggest you read the links at the bottom of the page. However, a great adjunct to reinforcing your posture is to join an alexander technique class. This will help you learn better body mechanics so that your posture becomes more ingrained into your psyche. We teach this at our spa and people absolutely love it. If you slouch then YOU WILL CONTINUE TO HAVE PAIN. Many of us suffer from knots in our upper backs and between our shoulder blades. These are very tight areas of muscle wich are otherwise known as trigger points. I will write more about trigger points and their referral patterns in future posts but for now i just wanted to share with you one of the best ways to help them.

Firstly, these knots or trigger points do not like stress, both emotional and physical. Obviously, it very difficult to remove our emotional stresses quickly and easily. Yes, you can do courses or seek counselling if you want to but this will be more of a long term solution to your knots and emotional wellbeing which is great but that is not going to get rid of your knots right now.

How do you get rid of muscle knots? Easy, by removing the causes

Posted by mark in Neck Pain Causes, Neck Pain Essentials |

So many people suffer from hard and painful muscle knots between their upper back and between their shoulder blades and it is so easy to fix. If you remove the causes you can remove your painful muscle knots. These knots, as they are known, are tight areas of muscle which are not only tight but become painful as well. This is because they are in a state of near-constant contraction. And muscles do not like to be contracted continually.

Imagine if I asked you to curl your bicep like a bodybuilder and hold it hard, contracting, contracting and contracting. Imagine I wanted you to keep contracting your bicep like that for 2 hours. Firstly, you would even be able to do it because you would fatigue AND your arm would be very painful. This is because your bicep hurts if you try to contract it for a long time just like any other muscle. If you did this for long enough you would get trigger points which can also refer pain. You may have even heard of these things, they are known as myofascial trigger points (myo means muscle and fascia permeates throughout the muscle).

When you sit slouched over the computer, or reading with your head down over a book, or sewing or driving with your head forward you are creating enormous loads on your muscles at the back of your neck and between your shoulder blades. In fact, every inch your head is forwards of the correct alignment produces an extra 10 lbs of load on your neck. A person who is slouched over their laptop will produce upwards of 25lbs on their muscles and joints. This constant need for your muscles to contract then produces pain and knots. Then you will also get active trigger points and can also suffer from referred pain from these such as headaches at the base of the skull and forehead.

You can get myofascial release, Rolfing, massage, acupuncture, chiropractic or whatever other therapy or gadget that you happen to be recommended and the results will never be anything more than temporary. You have not removed the cause! Once you remove the cause and allow the muscles to stop constantly having to attempt to hold your head up from falling on the ground you will start to see your knots ease. They will be able to relax because the cause of the problem will be gone. My new DVD will show you exactly how to do this.

Neck Exercises-The best and Worst to do and Why

Neck Pain and Arthritis