Why You Get Knots and How Muscle Works

You may already know that mus­cles are made up of tons of mini-muscles, or mus­cle fibers. Each mus­cle fiber has indi­vid­ual poten­tial to grow or to shrink, which is depend­ing on how much it is being used, rested, etc.

For the types of knots, exam­ple, when a mus­cle injury takes place, even in an effort to build strength, a small amount of scar tis­sue is released into the area. If the injury is small and the scar tis­sue tries to lay down on a mus­cle that is mov­ing well, the mus­cle will pull on the scar tis­sue and cause it to align with the mus­cle. Essen­tially, you are left with a small amount of restric­tion from the scar tis­sue, but noth­ing too sub­stan­tial. If this is a repet­i­tive cycle over time, the restric­tion can build and it can become symp­to­matic, accord­ing to Dr. Karam (Rag­ing Fat­loss).

He said, if the injury is a bit big­ger and the mus­cle can’t be used in this area, the scar tis­sue has more time to lay down, and a matrix or web of scar tis­sue forms. This forms a major restric­tion in the tis­sue and can even try to form bone at times, or cal­cify. This restric­tion forms imme­di­ately, it will con­tinue to build in time if the scar tis­sue is not ‘bro­ken down’ and absorbed back into your blood­stream that through proper mas­sage and exer­cise. This is a sec­ond type of knot.

Because the scar tis­sue is suf­fo­cat­ing it, so in both cases, the area of the mus­cle that has the knot does not receive good blood sup­ply, thus, with­out good blood sup­ply, it’s hard for any­thing to heal.

The worse thing is that at any­time, when you touch them, you pres­sure recep­tors in your scar tis­sue, and that’s why it causes the pain. Over time, even the need for these pres­sure recep­tors goes away, but the pain remains, which will cause you to choose not to make con­tact with that body part sub­con­sciously, and after all, it causes pain.

Then, what are you sup­posed to do?

Well, there is only way to get rid of these pesky pres­sure recep­tors, which is by putting pres­sure on them, simul­ta­ne­ously, break up the scar tis­sue as a mus­cle short­ens and elon­gates, pulling on the scar tis­sue and caus­ing it to realign with the mus­cle fibers.

Because there’s so much blood flow, the restric­tion goes away and the area heals, you restore your body.