Too many abdominal points at once?

[TheKomrade]

Hello all, due to a scheduling conflict I'm a week from my next PT appointment and need some advice. I've been working on about eight of my abdominal wall TPs for a month now, and have come across six more on each side of my obliques, and four in my lower abdominal region, not to mention a couple on the outside and inside of my thighs. I have not got to talk to my therapist about all the new points. Also, I discovered one just below my navel (nerve connection to the bladder) that is super irritable that I talked to my therapist about, and she told me to lay off it for now. I assumed that this one point near my navel was causing my new problems.

Since I started working on all the new TPs about a week ago, my abdominal region has been in a constant state of spasm usually starting about 2 hours after I work with all the TPs. I stopped working with the bladder nerve four days ago, and my abdomen is still going wild, so I assume it must be all the additional TPs I've found. This eventually wears on my pelvic floor so that it is also in a higher state of unrest. I can deal with the pain associated with this, but I doubt this can be the best scenario for recovery of the muscles both within my abdomen and pelvic floor area.

Should I go back to working with my original 8 points or continue the course of going after all the new ones too? Just wondering if this is a flare up that I should grit my teeth through or if I should go back to working the original areas, and move on to the new ones once the original points are gone.

I was feeling much better before I started on these new TPs. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[CppsDad]

Some of my abdominal TP work caused my most painful flare ups, even worse than the internal work. I suppose waiting to see your PT can't hurt, as they might be able to show you the "correct" way to work on that trigger point, and you would also have more confidence that what you are doing is correct. However, I've found that almost all the trigger point work is the same for me - push on it, hold it, sometimes change angles on it, and hold it more, until it stops hurting and relaxes. So I doubt you are doing anything wrong. If you have 15-20 trigger points, that is a lot. There is probably some good rationale for not going after all of them at once, but for the dones that you do go after, the grit and bear it approach works best. I tiptoed around my trigger points, especially in the perineum, for too long, and now after having results from working on them, I wish I had stuck with them early on when it hurt the most. None of this is easy. And it's important to keep in mind that the more it hurts, the more likely it is that the spots that are hurting are causing you pain.

Mike

[TheKomrade]

Thanks for the response. I think I am going to stick to trying to work through my oldest points first, even though the temptation is there to hit them all in an effort to get better as quickly as possible. I've been using my fingers until now, but I bought the Theracane the other day at my PT's advice. I read in the booklet that came with it to only go after 1 or 2 points at a time, so it made me wonder if addressing them all at the same time was the best approach for recovery.

A couple more abdominal TP questions: I've been using a time limit of 2 minutes for each TP, as in if a point hasn't relaxed by then, I release the pressure. Should I continue the pressure longer than that? And one other thing, the first TPs I've worked with aren't as sore anymore, but are much larger than before. Is that progress toward a longer, healthier muscle?

[scotsman]

....A couple more abdominal TP questions: I've been using a time limit of 2 minutes for each TP, as in if a point hasn't relaxed by then, I release the pressure. Should I continue the pressure longer than that? ....

I've found that some triggerpoints don't seem to 'relax' regardless of how long you hold them for. However, I've had lots of occasions when they haven't relaxed but the next time I've gone to treat that area I've found they have gone.

It's worth experimenting holding it longer just to see if it does relax them but if not then I'd still treat them as you have been and hopefully after a few days/weeks/months they will go/not come back.

Richard.

[TheKomrade]

Thanks for all the advice. I'll stay the course, and surely improve. Luckily my schedule and my PT had a cancellation today, so I got some great first-hand demonstration. My PT did advise to work with about a third of my TPs for now since I don't have nearly as bad a reaction as with working with all of them. Once again, thanks for the replies.

[CppsDad]

I've noticed that in areas that I thought were getting better, the "area of soreness" got larger inexplicably at times. I think it's all par for the course. After removing one trigger point, you can uncover others, including muscle bands that were locked in the tight stricture. Pressure is release in one spot and then shifts somewhere else. Just keep plugging ahead and doing what your therapist suggests. Eventually, some spots won't be sore, others will, and a few weeks after that the first spots will be sore again, and so on. In the end, you'll have very few painful spots and your overall pain level will hopefully improve.

Mike