Exercises You Should Be Doing - Trigger Point Work

A few years back, I was at a fitness conference where a new company was introducing a new product called an Acumobility Ball. It was basically a ball with a flat side and it was designed for soft tissue work.

Now, before I go too much further, just a quick refresher on soft tissue and why it’s good to do soft tissue work.

Soft tissue is any tissue in your body that is soft - I know, mind blowing, right? This includes muscles, fascia, ligaments, tendons, bursa sacs and joint capsules.

While there are different types of soft tissue work, I’ve become a big proponent of what is known as self-myofascial release (SMR). While there is different research out there that poo-poos (scientific term) the long-term benefits of SMR, I use it for both myself and my clients for a number of reasons.

When you do any sort of challenging movement—whether it’s resistance training, intense cardio or wrestling the ropey toy from your dog, the exercise usually creates small tears in the muscle called “microtrauma.”

That microtrauma results in the tissue healing, growing and ultimately getting stronger, but can also lead to adhesions.

This essentially occurs when tears don’t heal completely or properly, and muscle tissue begins to “stick” to other tissue creating tension from those tissues pulling on each other.

In other words, sh*t sticks together. And turns into those gnarly knots that none of us like. And where foam “rolling” and using a ball to “roll” out your muscles will get the blood flowing, it’s not going to necessarily have a therapeutic effect. In other words, traditional foam rolling isn’t going to get rid of those knots.

And that’s where trigger point work comes in. Homing in on a specific area of the body and doing intentional work will help get the knots out and restore blood flow.

Once I decided to try this weird ball with a flat bottom, I was hooked. Probably because I was finally feeling some actual change in working out the knots.

I the video below, I use two Acumobility balls in demonstrating a technique to help reduce and possibly eliminate some of those trigger points in your forearms, which can be especially helpful if you struggle with tennis or golfer’s elbow.