What is muscle pain?

Muscle pain is a very common and often unpleasant experience of discomfort that you feel in your muscles. An extended period of worsening muscle pain is called myofascial pain syndrome. Most pain acts as a warning signal that something is wrong with the body and is very important as a protective mechanism to ensure you don’t further harm your muscles when they are damaged. With so much muscle tissue in the body, it is inevitable that we will all experience muscle pain at some time.

Your pain is probably the result of a small area of your muscle becoming tight or damaged from injury or overuse and is now tender. This small area of tender muscle is called a Trigger Point. A Trigger Point is the part of the muscle that introduces pain into the muscle group.

Trigger points can form anywhere in the body after an injury or if muscles brace against pain or trauma for a long period. They also can result from chronic overuse of muscles due to stress or to poor posture that puts constant pressure on muscles not designed to withstand it. Acute muscle pain can become chronic through failure to resolve the acute problem promptly.