Myofascial Trigger Point Release at KINETIKA
You might know the feeling: a knot in your upper trapezius that refers aching pain into your neck or behind your eye. Or deep buttock tension that tracks down into your leg. These are trigger points — hyperirritable spots within a taut band of muscle tissue that refer pain, create weakness, and limit movement.
At KINETIKA, trigger point release is a precise clinical technique applied within a full assessment of your movement and pain pattern. We identify the trigger points driving your symptoms and treat them directly.
What Is a Trigger Point?
A myofascial trigger point is a discrete, hypersensitive spot within a taut band of skeletal muscle. When compressed, it produces local tenderness and characteristic referred pain — often in a predictable pattern that maps to specific muscles. Trigger points can be “active” (spontaneously painful) or “latent” (painful only on compression), and they contribute significantly to many common pain syndromes.
How We Treat Trigger Points
Manual Compression (Ischaemic Compression)
Sustained, firm pressure is applied directly to the trigger point. This temporarily reduces blood flow to the site, followed by a reactive hyperaemia that flushes metabolites and reduces the chemical sensitisation of the point. The pressure is maintained until the therapist feels the tissue release and the patient reports a reduction in referred pain.
Dry Needling
A fine acupuncture needle is inserted directly into the trigger point, producing a local twitch response — an involuntary contraction of the taut band. This twitch response is therapeutic: it mechanically disrupts the contracted sarcomeres and resets the neuromuscular dysfunction at the trigger point. Dry needling reaches deeper muscles that are inaccessible to manual compression.
Spray and Stretch
A vapocoolant spray is applied to the skin overlying the trigger point and its referral zone, temporarily reducing pain sensitivity, while the therapist passively stretches the muscle to its full length. This technique is particularly useful for widespread or difficult-to-isolate trigger point patterns.
Common Conditions
Trigger point release is effective for tension-type headaches, cervicogenic headache, neck and upper back pain, temporomandibular dysfunction, shoulder pain, low back pain, and hip or buttock pain with leg referral. If you’ve been told you have chronic muscle pain without a clear structural cause, trigger points are often a significant contributing factor.