Tight muscles and Trigger points. What are they and do they even exist?

Tight muscles and trigger points are thought to appear after trauma, excessive exercise, stress or just for

unknown reasons. Hello myofascial syndrome!

Many of us have never doubted the existence of these trigger points or muscle knots because we have

ALL at some point experienced tightness or pain in our muscles so why question? They MUST exist right?

If I press on them, it feels much better! So, they do exist. But then they come back...minutes later.

Over many decades, experts came with crazy explanations for trigger points/muscle knots, but none of them were evidence-based.

One thing for sure, if the best trigger point experts and massage therapists can't locate them consistently on patients with pain such as fibromyalgia, but do consistently locate them on healthy painless patients, how can anyone even say they exist?

Yes, you feel sore. Yes, your pain is real. But your sensation of tightness is exactly just that, a sensation. Muscles don't turn into knots. And stretching your muscles definitely won't change a thing. In a few minutes, you'll feel tight again!

In fact, people with great ROM (range of motion) often feel tight. Many athletes with hypermobility experienced tight muscles. Why would you stretch a hypermobile person? And why would a hypermobile individual feel tight?

To me feeling tight is like feeling pain. You cannot see pain and you cannot palpate pain. The same goes for tight muscles. You likely cannot see tight muscles and you likely cannot palpate the tight knots.

When something has no scientific basis, but is used as if it was evidence, we call them pseudo evidence-based science.

Just because an idea has been generally accepted by (Experts) or even some doctors, it still doesn't make it more real.

Until next time😊

Physio Summum Brossard

Reference:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25477053/