Trigger points is a name given to areas of muscle, muscular attachments or muscle fascia that are particularly irritated and in a state of continuous contraction. The focused treatment of these hyper irritable areas is known as trigger point therapy. Trigger points can cause a range of problems including:

• Local pain
• Referred pain
• Restricted movement
• Muscle dysfunction such as weakness or altered movement patterns

Muscle adhesions (“knots”) vs trigger points

If you’ve had deep tissue massage before, then you’re probably familiar with muscle “knots” – the areas of muscle fibre adhesion that the therapist works to break down. Trigger points are similar, but there are a few differences:

1. As well as causing local pain (pain where the trigger point actually is), trigger points often refer pain to other areas.
2. Trigger points are in a state of continuous contraction. Muscle knots aren’t necessarily in a state of contraction, they are just fibres that have become stuck together.
3. Trigger points are often extremely sensitive to touch and pressure on them may cause muscle twitching.
4. While muscle knots are fairly easy to feel, trigger points may be quite hard to locate and can be very small areas or even just hyper-tense muscle bands.
5. Trigger points tend to be found in particular areas of the muscles.

You won’t necessarily be aware that you have trigger points, as opposed to muscle knots. They both cause pain and restricted movement and it’s usually only during massage that characteristics of trigger points such as hyper-sensitivity, referred pain and muscle twitching become evident.

Trigger point therapy

Trigger points are treated by the application of pressure, just like muscle knots. However, trigger points are often more effectively treated by sustained pressure. Sometimes therapists will maintain pressure on a trigger point for up to 2 minutes. Although the pressure can be painful at first, as the trigger point releases the discomfort eases.

Have you got trigger points?

As mentioned above, trigger points aren’t always easy to find, even for a therapist. As they can refer pain, they aren’t necessarily where the pain is. Small trigger points are hard to feel in the muscle and larger ones may feel like ordinary muscle knots. Or the trigger point may be more like a tight band than a “point”. During a massage, there are a few clues that trigger points are present:

• An area that the client finds particularly tender to touch
• Pain felt in a different location to that being worked on
• Pressure on a muscle causing a twitch
• The suspected trigger point is at a common trigger point location
• The discomfort eases after sustained pressure on the area

Although there are therapists who specialise in trigger point therapy, there’s no reason why trigger points can’t be treated as part of a regular deep tissue massage, if they’re found to be present. A deep tissue massage is a 45 minute treatment for back and shoulders (£33), or 75 minute treatment for full body (£52). 

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