A hot bath is already a great way to get some relief from muscle pain. But it gets better …

The Bath Trick for Trigger Point Release

A clever way of combining self-treatment techniques to self-treat your myofascial trigger points (muscle knots)

by Paul Ingraham, Vancouver, Canada MORE
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Credentials and qualifications

I am a writer and retired Registered Massage Therapist (unusually well-trained for a massage therapist, a 3000-hour program). I’m almost done with a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree. I am a peer reviewer for The Natural Standard, and a copyeditor for Science-Based Medicine. My most important qualification is more than a decade of workaholic post-graduate study, clinical experience, and constant conversations with readers from around the world, including many experts who have provided countless suggestions and criticisms.

For more information, see: Who Am I to Say? More information about my qualifications, credentials and professional experiences for my readers and customers.

EXCERPT This article is an excerpt from SaveYourself.ca’s ridiculously detailed tutorial about trigger point (muscle knot) self-treatment, which contains more detail about the bath trick, as well as hundreds of other basic and advanced tips and tricks.

New from the Department of Why Didn’t I Think Of This Before: the bath trick! I discovered this while working on my own back muscle knots, which is a never-ending job — they are always under control, more or less, but always threatening to come back, under the onslaught of chair work that I do, plus assorted other stresses.

This is what trigger points do, of course — they come back. It’s in their nature. And that’s why I’m always working on them — both my client trigger points and my own — and always discovering new ways of doing it. It’s a creative challenge that never ends. It’s also why SaveYourself.ca publishes a deliciously detailed tutorial about trigger points.

Super quick introduction to trigger points

Muscle knots, technically known as myofascial trigger points (MTPs), are a factor in most of the world’s aches and pains. A trigger point is a small patch of super-contracted and irritated muscle tissue, which can cause symptoms ranging from mild stiffness to extreme pain and a variety of odd side effects. They not only cause pain and problems directly, but also spring to life in response to almost all other painful problems, compounding and complicating them. Even though the existence and importance of trigger points is well known to medical specialists and researchers, most doctors and therapists knows little about them, so misdiagnosis and ineffective treatment are epidemic. For more information about how trigger points might be involved in your own medical history, see:

Advanced Tutorial: Save Yourself from Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain Syndrome!

The bath trick is a “together at last” trick: it came from combining two other classic tactics for releasing your own trigger points: the heat of a bath, with the pressure of a ball (see tennis ball massage). But the result is more than the sum of the parts, and it works better in some ways than anything else I’d come up with before. Suddenly I’m using the bath trick regularly myself, and recommending it to every other patient.

Absurdly simple instructions for trigger point release in the bath: simply …

run a hot bath …
climb in and get nice and warm and comfortable …
and then bring in a ball! Trap the ball between your body and the bottom or the back of the tub, and cheerfully crush your trigger points with relieving pressure.

Ah!

The Bath Trick

Run a hot bath, and trap a ball between your body and the bottom or back of the tub to rub your back muscles — your buoyancy allows for excellent control with moderate pressures.

More information

What makes trigger point self-treatment effective is mostly the size of your bag of tricks — if you have a lot of rational options to choose from, one of them will probably work.

If you have severe, stubborn trigger points, the bath trick alone isn’t going to be enough. Try SaveYourself.ca’s extremely detailed tutorial, Save Yourself from Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain Syndrome! It includes all of this information and many, many more troubleshooting tips, tricks and concepts for difficult cases. The bath trick is just one of dozens of ideas. In the tutorial, you will learn more about why the bath trick works so well, what kind of ball is especially ideal for the bath trick (there really is a particular sort of ball that definitely works best), which muscle groups benefit the most from the bath trick, plus many other clever ways to use your hands and tools to do more than just “take the edge off” your muscle pain. Buy it now ($19.95) or read the first few sections for free.

What’s the salamander about?