Drew Brees touts effectiveness of Dry Needling

Drew Brees relies on Dry Needling to prepare for game day

We’ve been saying it for years – dry needling works.  And Drew Brees is a believer!

In the below excerpt from Peter King’s Week 11 NFL Awards article, Drew Brees shares his weekly dry needling routine to get ready for game day. His physical therapist sometimes injects 107 dry needles all over his body to prepare him for game day!

There is a recovery tool practiced by some premier athletes—in football and other sports—called Dry Needling. Last week, on Monday at the Saints’ training facility, one day after Brees played Denver and three days before he played Carolina, the Saints’ trainer put these 107 hypodermic needles in specific trigger areas where Brees felt either pain or discomfort, or in places Brees was trying to do maintenance work to stave off future trouble spots. Sounds pretty painful, getting stuck with 107 needles. “Sometimes,” Brees said as we drove into work that morning, his words captured by NBC audio. “Some you don’t [feel], some you do if it hits a tight spot. It’ll shoot this kind of … we’ll call them zingers … It’ll shoot this like … hitting a nerve or something just shoots down your arm or your back or your leg or something like that, but it means that it’s working. But I’ll do it neck, shoulders, high back, mid back, low back, glutes, IT bands, hips, sometimes hamstrings, groin, calves, foot. It’s great.”

The Dry Needling Process

The way Dry Needling works is a certified practitioner will insert a fine filament needle into the taut band of tissue. This provokes what is called a deep twitch response in the muscle. When this happens it is like hitting the reset button. The muscle will immediately release and lengthen.

The amazing part about this technique is not just the immediacy of the muscular release and the noticeable improvement in mobility, but also the referral pattern of symptoms the recipient will feel. For example, a trigger point in the hip may send a sensation of relief all the way down the outside of the leg. As pain sufferers we often believe we know the generator responsible for our pain. But sometimes its origin may surprise you.

If you are feeling pain, call us today! Baudry physical therapists can use trigger point dry needling techniques to provide relief from muscle tightness, joint mobility, and symptoms of pain and dysfunction.

Learn how dry needling helped this musician return to the stage: Music to our Ears…Client’s hand strength restored with physical therapy