Resistance Stretching & Strength training for Chronic Pelvic Pain syndrome
Includes access to the Facebook group.
Hi, I’m David McCoid
When I was 19 years old chronic pelvic pain syndrome stole my freedom. It took 14 years to get it back.
During that time, I tried everything – antibiotics, prostate injections, pelvic floor physical therapy, the Wise Anderson clinic in Sebastopol, endless stretching and yoga, and finally pudendal nerve entrapment surgery, not once but three times. Nothing worked. In hindsight it is no surprise those treatments failed.
My experience of pelvic pain and my desperate search for relief may sound extraordinary yet I know it is shared by millions of pelvic pain sufferers across the globe.
In 2012 after giving up on the medical profession I began to research pelvic pain and muscle tension to heal. I eventually went on to work with pelvic pain sufferers. During that time I learned the following.
- Myofascial trigger points as described by Travell and Simons do not exist. Trigger points are fiction and the theory has been comprehensively refuted. No one denies that people have sore spots but trigger points have never been proven to exist. REF
- Manual therapy is just touch. It can reduce pain temporarily, but it is not creating tissue changes. There is no form of manual therapy that is superior to any other. They all work the same way. Touch can sometimes reduce pain. (Article on manual therapy)
- Internal pelvic floor physical therapy is ineffective and uncomfortable for the patient. It only serves to create false beliefs about the pelvic floor. You already know this if you are reading this site.
- Static Stretching, the kind found in pelvic pain books and YouTube, is not an efficient way to create flexibility and creates little, if any tissue changes. Stretching does not relax muscles. Stretching increases muscle tone. This is a physiological fact.
- Flexibility (range of motion) is unrelated to chronic pelvic pain.
- Resistance Stretching which utilizes muscular contractions is the best method for treating the sensations of muscle tightness and pain in CPPS.
- Pelvic pain patients are often told ‘’pain is in the brain’’. A more accurate and empowering message is that pain is in the person rather than the brain. Peripheral tissues (muscles, connective tissues) have a significant role in many people’s chronic pain.
- It is possible to recover from pelvic pain. You do not have to ‘manage’ pelvic pain.
On this website, you can make an immediate start with resistance stretching by clicking here. If you have questions, you can also email me at david@freedomfrompelvicpain.com
David McCoid – DCT practitioner and author of Freedom from Pelvic Pain, available on Amazon.
The Desperate Search for Relief
When you have pelvic pain your muscles feel incredibly tight. Sufferers often go from treatment to treatment with little to no relief.
Do any of these sound familiar?
The list goes on but nothing is working. You feel exhausted with no solution in sight. Your muscles feel just as tight as they did before.
- Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy
- Trigger point treatment
- Trigger point wands
- Stretching
- Meditation
- Pilates
- Manual therapies
- Prostate injections
- Corrective Exercise
- Pudendal Nerve Entrapment surgery
- Yoga
How do you treat muscle tension?
David McCoid & Nic Bartolotta. Creators of the Dynamic Contraction Technique™ Course for Pelvic Pain.
This was a question I was obsessed with for 3 years.
The mainstream view of pelvic pain is that muscle tension is a cause or component of pelvic pain. This is a view that I share. Where I differ from the mainstream view is how this muscle tension is treated.
Most treatments for pelvic pain focus on relaxing muscles. Stretching is also recommended but the idea that stretching lengthens or relaxes a muscle is false.
Trying to relax and stretch muscles is an approach that consistently fails.
The correct approach is to strengthen a muscle. To be specific the correct approach is to strengthen a muscle as it is being forced to lengthen.
My research into muscle tension led to me discovering a novel approach to treating muscle tension created by physical therapist Nic Bartolotta. Nic had created a system called Dynamic Contraction Technique™ a specific form of resistance stretching.
When I met Nic he was not treating pelvic pain. The focus of his work was working with professional teams and players in the NBA (USA Professional Basketball).
After meeting Nic I decided to train in Dynamic Contraction Technique™ and became a DCT practitioner. After I completed my training I created the resistance stretching course for pelvic pain available on this website in co-operation with Nic Bartolotta.
Resistance Stretching uses muscle contractions to treat muscle tension. It uses all three different types of muscle contraction – concentric, isometric, and eccentric contractions to stretch tissues in and around the pelvis.
Resistance Stretching for pelvic pain is the only treatment that consistently produces patient success stories and is being recommended on many patient forums. It is frequently discussed on English, Spanish and Portuguese forums.
