You should feel like a supple leopard all the time! It shouldn’t take you 30 minutes to roll out your calves, dynamically stretch your hips and get your hammies turned out for before every workout or run. A leopard just jumps after it’s prey the second it’s ready to without the whole warm up dance, so should you. So if you’re stuck with tightness everywhere then that’s a warning sign that your muscles are stiff and tight, let’s dive in to a recent study on how dry needling can help stiff muscles.
Normal tissue is not painful under pressure
You should be able to mash on tissue and it shouldn’t really be painful. During my physical exam, part of my process is to palpate your tissue for these tight, tender spots that potential refer pain to other areas. Normal tissue doesn’t hurt. When it does hurt it means there is something causing that. Usually it’s irritated nerves spitting out peptides that gunk up your tissue and reduce blood flow. This makes the tissue tight over time and tender to touch.
Normal tissue should feel soft and supple not tight and ropey
Along the same lines as above during my physical exam I’m also searching for tropic changes in your tissue. Normal tissue should be nice and supple. When areas get tight and ropey, blood flow has changed. Since we’re essentially one giant meat suit, if we have tightness in one area, that will cause a whole cascade of tightness in other areas. Over time this creates bio mechanical changes, to how your stand, how you walk, how you move, etc. And those changes can cause excessive stress on tissues that aren’t designed to handle that stress, leading to more problems.
How dry needling can help tight muscles
The good news is that dry needling is the most effective tool I’ve seen for tight muscles. In my dry needling clinic in Tampa, FL I help tight muscles every single day. As the most experienced dry needles in Florida, I’ve seen how amazing this treatment can be but let’s dive into a recent research article where the investigators questioned the effects of dry needling on tight stiff muscles.
In “Effects of dry needling on muscle stiffness in latent myofascial trigger points”, the researchers took 51 people who had tight shoulders but weren’t experiencing pain in them and split the group in 2. One half had real dry needling to their trapezius muscles (the ones that get super tight when you’ve been sitting at your computer all day at zoom calls) and the other half had what’s called a sham (what they call fake) procedure done. Now I don’t want to dive into the silliness of a sham needling procedure but let’s pretend that doesn’t matter here.
So they used some equipment to measure muscle tightness, how much pressure it took to elicit a painful response when mashing on the tissue, and how thick the muscle was before and after treatment and then compared that to the group who received fake needling. Of course there was huge changes in the dry needling group and they all had significantly less tight muscles, less pressure pain, and less muscle thickness.
The good news
If you’re not feeling like a supple leopard then dry needling is a great treatment for tight muscles. Dr. Josh Hanson, DACM has performed more dry needling treatments than anyone else in the state of Florida. Be mindful that not everyone who performs dry needling is the same. So get in touch whatever way works best and let’s get your body working like it should!
Get in touch your way
The most experienced and comprehensive Prolozone Treatment for Knee Pain can be found with Dr. Josh Hanson, DACM at Hanson Complete Wellness in Tampa, FL. Dr Hanson has performed over 30,000 procedures for the treatment of pain. Feel free to get in touch whatever way works best for you – Call or Text us at 813-534-0311, Fill out a Candidacy Form and Dr. Josh Hanson, DACM at Hanson Complete Wellness will call you to see if you’re a candidate or Book Your Visit Online Here.
