Every time I get a massage, the person doing it tells me that I have huge knots in the muscles of my upper back & neck. (And that I really should do something about it.)
What exactly does that mean? What is a knot in a muscle? My back and neck don’t feel “tight” or anything. Before the massage, everything seems fine - during, I can feel them doing something (not sure what) and afterwards I’m sore, but I don’t really understand what the condition of the muscles supposedly is in the first place.
Thanks.
A quick Google search for muscle knots turned up the following. This page discusses what “knots” are, how they form, and how to get rid of them.
http://www.rosenbaumrehab.com/spasm.htm
Umm… silly question perhaps, but why do you keep getting massages if they make you sore? I’ve never been to a professional, but every massage I’ve had felt good. During and after. Isn’t that the whole point?
Sore & bad are two different things (to me anyway).
90% of the massage feels great. Around my upper back and neck, it feels like they’re doing something necessary and it doesn’t feel bad but it isn’t just about calming and relaxing the way it feels on, say my legs or arms. It is as though I can feel them pushing against something (I’m just not sure what they’re pushing against - hence the question). The “sore” that I feel the next day is much like the “sore” I feel the day after I’ve done a really good workout session - which is not pain, but the feeling that something was done to the muscle. I’m just not sure what something is in the case of the massage.
My guess is that if you had a real “knot” or spasm (wherein the muscle is in constant contraction) you would have felt it. I think this is massage lingo for “here is an imaginary knot, which I have found (in my imagination), but I’ll tell you it’s real so you’ll think I’m really doing something for you and you will continue to seek my expert services.”