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This video will show you a forearm myofascial release you can use to turn off your active triggers. You can use this same technique on other muscles as a simple and effective way to regain your range of movement.
This is a painless treatment for trigger points. There are a number of different ways to treat triggers and this one is called a torsional myofascial release.
It’s an elegant and beautiful treatment that you can learn to do on yourself. And if you’re a therapist, you can learn to do for others or on others. I’m going to show you how to do this on my forearm because trigger points are really common there, especially in the muscles that extend the wrist and the fingers
There’s a group of muscles on the top of your forearm called the extensors. The way that you find trigger points here is to look for a little area which has gone into protective spasm. When it goes into protective spasm, it causes a tight band in the muscle
The muscles run along the forearm and therefore as you start to feel for the trigger, you’re searching for these tight little bands. They can feel like a little guitar string.
Once you’ve found a band then you move up or down it until you find it a little thickening where the muscle feels tender and sore. That’s where an active trigger point is located.
A trigger point acts like the trigger of a gun. Often you feel pain where it is, but you may feel also pain that refers to somewhere else in your body. The trigger points from the forearm extensors refer pain to your wrist, hand, and fingers.
Sometimes people feeling pain in their wrist and hand get examined by a medical professional, and they can’t find anything in that area. But they haven’t looked up the arm to where the active trigger point could be.
Once you’re on the trigger, pin it accurately with two fingers. If you push harder on it, you’ll feel pain on the spot, and sometimes you can also recreate the pain referral pattern down into your wrist. This means it’s an active trigger point. It’s now time to do a forearm myofascial release.
To treat the trigger the first thing you do is slowly lift and rotate your arm. You’re twisting your arm and lifting your wrist just very gently.
What you’ll find is that as you torsion your wrist and move it around, you’ll suddenly find a spot where it doesn’t hurt. It’s a subtle movement, but when you find the right area of rotation, your pain will disappear.
This is this magic spot that you find with the torsional myofascial release. Once you’ve found this spot, it’s time to deactivate the trigger. As I push a little harder, practice breathing slowly and relaxing. Stay below the pain threshold.
Eventually, you’ll find you’re able to press quite hard, and still feel no pain. Keep relaxing your arm and your breathing. At this point, you can start to rotate or lift your arm and start to activate the muscle.
As you activate your forearm muscles, you’re still pressing quite firmly. You’re feeling for pain. When you find you’ve gone into pain zone, rotate your forearm back out of pain zone. Relax, find a comfortable position, and wait, keeping pressure on the trigger point.
Once you’re comfortable again, breathe out and rotate a slowly back into the zone that was painful. You should find that it’s no longer painful, and you’ve extended your zone of comfort.
What happening is the torsional myofascial release is working. You’ll be getting a lot more movement without pain. When the trigger point is completely released, you can press as hard as you like, and the spot on your forearm won’t hurt.
Now you’ve done a torsional myofascial release on a forearm trigger point. This technique a mixture of ischemic pressure and the fact that the dynamics of your muscles change as you twist your arm.
You can do this technique on the muscles in your neck as well. You just need to find the angle at which all the pain goes and then gradually increase that range of movement while keeping ischemic pressure on the trigger point.
You can do this on your back, hip, or knee. The same principle applies. This is an elegant technique you can do on yourself or on someone you’re treating.
If you are doing a torsional myofascial release on a patient, it’s important to get continual feedback from them to make sure the technique stays pain-free. You can then teach them to do it on themselves.
For the release to work, you need to find that wonderful zone where there’s no pain, and then gradually encroach into areas of pain. You should be always coming back into your comfort zone, relaxing, then going back, further and further until the pain is gone completely.
At that stage, you’ve turned the trigger point off and you’ve deactivated it so you now have a full range of painless movement–very exciting!