What is Precision Neuromuscular Therapy?

Orthopedic Assessments are short, quick muscle tests that help me pinpoint more precisely which muscle is the cause of pain or dysfunction. For example, If you balance on one leg… does your hip drop while doing so? When you turn your neck to the right… do you feel pain on the right or on the left? Is your pain on the same side or opposite side? There are many tests for all the muscles in your body that help understand what is causing pain. Sometimes the answer isn’t muscle, and the recommendation might not be massage. An example of that would be in someone who has a “hard end feel” in their joint, which would indicate a bone restriction versus a soft tissue restriction. With pnmt we are able to be more precise and hyper focused on the way your body moves, and where there is dysfunction.

What are trigger points? I use this word a lot. Trigger points are hypersensitive points on a taut band of muscle that create referral pain patterns. Trigger points feel like a small millimeter nodule on a taut band of muscle that when pressed; it creates an intense feeling (I like to call “hot poker stick”), a twitch and often you will feel pain in a different area of your body than where I am pressing. That is the referral pattern. A trigger point in your forearm might refer to a pinky finger or, in the neck you may feel behind your eye or by pressing on your glute minimus you may feel a referral pattern that mimics sciatica nerve pain. By pressing on these points for around 20 seconds, it helps release that taut muscle and help it melt down. It starts intense and within seconds feels very relieving. Some of my clients call this a “good pain”. There are only three ways to make a trigger point relax and that is through precise massage techniques, dry needling (which is performed by a physical therapist) or by utilizing a prescription strength cold spray and putting that muscle into a full range of motion stretch (I have not really known anyone to use that one). Massage is a great way to work on trigger points because we can utilize multiple techniques in the full area where dry needling only works on specific trigger points. What I mean is using Swedish massage or adding myofascial techniques in combination with the trigger point release to smooth out the muscles. A regular deep tissue massage will not release trigger points.

By making a short term and long-term goal we are able to better understand if progress is being made or if anything should be changed. A short-term goal might be wanting to have no pain in your feet when stepping down on the floor, within three months. A long-term goal could be that you achieve no pain in your feet after running within six months. What is something you want to do, but your pain is keeping you from doing? Maybe you’d like to return to weightlifting without pain and your first goal is to lift 10% of the weight you were able to previously, but longer term to return to weightlifting without restriction on weight. Another way to gauge progress would be by using a pain scale. From 1-10 on the pain scale how intense are your headaches and how often are you having them? A goal could be that you want the pain to decrease to 5/10 and only happen once a month versus 3 times a month. But longer term you want to make it a full month without any headaches. Every person has a reason they wanted to include massage therapy in their regular health regiment. What is your reason? What do you want to achieve? With a more precise goal It is easier for me to problem solve how I can help you with that goal.