The calves are a common spot of discomfort and magic massage hands can get pricy. Self-massage can be quite tricky to do without straining because it’s not easy for everyone to reach their own legs! My fiancé regularly requests calf massages and my hands just can’t keep up. Your Pressure Pyramid is the perfect tool to push your calf into, or use it to aid in massaging someone else’s calf without exhausting your hands and arms. 

**Place Your Pressure Pyramid on top of a Yoga Block and massage the calf.**

Calf pain can stop people from being able to walk, run and play sports. It can become so bad people resort to surgery. Relieving this pain can sometimes be done by treating calf trigger points. Trigger point therapy can be a powerful tool to treat and prevent injuries, so that you can get back to your daily activity.

The best way to approach self-massage is to press on the trigger point directly and hold for a minute or two, or apply small kneading strokes. No need to be too concerned about the direction of the muscle fibres.  Too much intensity can backfire and make it worse, and the right intensity could actually be a key to improvement.

Everything You Need to Know About Trigger Point Therapy for Calves

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7 Common Causes for Calf Pain

• Arterial claudication is a pain caused by too little blood flow to your legs or arms.

• Neurogenic claudication a common symptom of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) and describes intermittent leg pain from impingement of the nerves emanating from the spinal cord.

• Achilles tendinitis is an overuse injury of the Achilles tendon, the band of tissue that connects calf muscles at the back of the lower leg to your heel bone.

• Diabetic neuropathy a type of nerve damage that can occur if you have diabetes. High blood sugar (glucose) can injure nerves throughout your body. Diabetic neuropathy often damages nerves in your legs and feet.

• Plantar fasciitis one of the most common causes of heel pain. It involves inflammation of a thick band of tissue that runs across the bottom of your foot and connects your heel bone to your toes (plantar fascia).

• Varicose veins superficial veins that have become enlarged and twisted. Typically they occur just under the skin in the legs. Usually resulting in few symptoms but some may experience fullness or pain in the area.

• Deep vein thrombosis a serious condition that occurs when a blood clot forms in a vein located deep inside your body. 

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How to Avoid Calf Injury

Warming up by walking at a moderate pace before engaging in more intense exercise can help to prevent muscle strain injuries, thus allowing you to continue everyday activities. 

Along with these measures, you may also choose to do some gentle stretching to reduce muscle tightness after exercise. Adding in some light trigger point massage before vigorous  activity, if you are already dealing with some pain.

It is important to check in with your doctor before beginning a stretching routine to ensure the stretches and trigger point tool will not aggravate the injury.

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Treatment for Calf Pain

• • Allow your body to rest if you have muscle knots
  • Gentle stretching that elongates your muscles can help you to release tension in your body
  • Aerobic exercise may help to relieve muscle knots
  • Hot and cold therapy
  • Use a muscle rub
  • Trigger point pressure release
  • Physiotherapy

Often trigger points develop from problems in another areas so it makes them much harder to find. One example would be if you’re wearing footwear that isn’t right for you; you may develop trigger points in your calf muscles or lower back until you resolve the footwear problem. If this is the case, you’ll be treating the trigger points all day long and see little, if any, lasting results.

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6 Main Calf Muscles that get Trigger Points

• Gastrocnemius
• Soleus
• Tibialis Anterior
• Tibialis Posterior
• Peroneus
• Popliteus

Trigger points can correct muscle imbalances and that’s how you can effectively treat an injury or prevent one from occurring. One area might respond to a trigger point whereas another area might not. If an area doesn’t respond it’s either because you’re on the wrong trigger point, you aren’t treating it correctly (too much or too little pressure or time) but most often, that trigger point needs its source addressed, whether it is dietary, lifestyle, training, footwear  change perhaps, or maybe a different therapy such as acupuncture, chiropractic, or another effective type of bodywork. 

It’s okay to treat a trigger point a few times a day if you’re improving each time, but don’t think more is necessarily better. If you’re sore the next day then don’t continue, give it a rest and seek professional help!

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Looking for a Trigger Point device that Works?

As always you can purchase your compact Trigger Point Tool to use at home, at the office, or on the go at the link here.