Knotty Talk

We have been busy with yard work and building projects here. To be honest, my muscles are feeling the effect, and I miss my massage therapist! It's time to take my own advice, bring out the wheat bag and have a hot bath. I would like to use some epsom salts, but they got commandeered for high school science experiments (along with my alum, washing soda, citric acid, baking soda and cabbage, yes, I said cabbage)! I did already take my own advice and spent an hour in the hammock today with an audio book!

On it's way to being a potting
cupboard

A little bit of make do and mend
I didn't have a long roller sponge
And my small roller was missing
 pieces, so I put two small sponges
on the large roller

A lot of people think of soups, stews and other crock pot goodies as winter fare. They are extremely useful when you want to spend all day working in the yard. After digging, pruning and hauling, do you really want to come in and make supper? Nothing tastes so good as dinner that is already made when you are bone tired!

So on to Knotty Talk

We all talk about having knots in our muscles, but what is a knot? In massage we work on a lot of different tissues; skin, fascia, muscle, tendons and ligaments. (Not to mention the effect it has on the circulatory system, nervous system and lymphatic system.  But that’s for another day!) I often use the term tissues, because we cannot separate them. Injuries and conditions affect them all, and treatment works on them all. Soft tissue injury is a term to separate them from skeletal injuries, like broken bones.

Skin—The largest organ in the body, a barrier to the outside world, temperature regulation, vitamin D synthesizer, the system through which we sweat (secrete waste), and covered in a complex network of nerves. Keep it moisturized and protect it from the sun!

Fascia—A fibrous layer of connective tissue that adheres skin to muscle (it’s like interfacing in sewing).

Muscle—In this context we are talking about skeletal muscles, the ones we can contract. We also have cardiac muscle and smooth muscle in our organs.

Tendons— A connective tissue that attaches muscle to bone.

Ligaments— A connective tissue that attaches bone to bone.

What most of us think of as a knot, RMTs call adhesions, scar tissue, or trigger points. Many times clients ask me what I’m feeling, or how I know which muscles have a problem. Each thing has a different texture. I like to compare muscles to clay. When you first start kneading clay, it is resistant and hard. After working with it for a while, it warms up and becomes more pliable. When there are additional issues, we feel all sorts of things. A knot can feel like a hard pea or marble under the skin. Long muscles can feel like a rope. Fascia can crackle like the spine of a new book or bubble wrap. We also feel how easily things move. If a client is laying face down and relaxed, I should be able to hold the shoulder blade and move it slightly in all directions. If I can’t, it has a restricted range of motion (ROM).

Muscle fibers run the entire length of the muscle, and each one has to contract individually to make the body part move. Picture your bicep. That’s the upper arm muscle that kids like to flex, “look how big my muscles are!” When your bicep contracts (flexes),  you are pulling your forearm toward your shoulder. The distance between the two ends of the bicep shortens, so the bulk of the muscle “pops” out and makes that lovely display of strength. When we “make a muscle” it’s hard to the touch. When the muscle relaxes, the arm straightens out, the bicep lengthens, and it feels relaxed.

Although the biceps looks like a single thing, its really a collection of thousands of muscle fibers that all have to co-ordintate together to flex. Some of those little fibers don’t pay attention to their instructions, and don’t relax when they are told to. They keep holding their contractions like a bulldog with a bone. The resulting knot feels like a hard little lump, like a miniature version of “make a muscle”. Prolonged pressure on this type of knot  forces out metabolic waste and deprives the fibers of oxygen, so it can’t maintain the contraction. Like trying to lift a heavy weight and hold your breath.

Earlier, I mentioned scar tissue. I’m not referring to the scars on our knees that children proudly count and show off on the playground. Picture the old cartoons of the fraying rope, one thread snapping at a time. To fully tear a muscle requires some serious trauma, but those individual little fibers snap all the time. We usually are unaware, they don’t cause pain or problems. The two ends of the fiber grow back together and get on with their day. Scar tissue happens when they don’t grow back together in a tidy, well-mannered fashion. They end up thick and bumpy or in a rat’s nest, like tangled hair. By using different massage techniques your massage therapist can break up these adhesions and realign the fibers so they behave themselves.

Adhesions can also develop if collagen fibers form random links when tissues are in a shortened position for a long time—like a spider web going in every direction. These adhesions restrict motion. In this case, you massage therapist is trying to break those connections to restore a normal range of motion. This technique is also used to soften surgical scars so they don’t pull on surrounding tissues. Regular stretching routines and physical activities that use all you major muscle groups, like swimming, prevent these adhesions from forming.  Our modern life encourages jobs that specialize in a single task. This encourages adhesions to form because we stay in a single position for hours at a time.

So keep moving, keep stretching and keep positive! You're friendly neighbourhood massage therapist will be beating out your knots someday soon!