Why Sitting All Day Can Cause Muscle Pain?

Most muscle pain gets labelled as overuse.
The assumption is simple, you used it too much or too hard, so now it hurts.

But in clinic, that explanation often falls short.

A lot of people haven’t trained hard at all. They’ve just spent long hours sitting at a desk, driving, or standing in the same position. And yet their neck, shoulders, or calves feel tight, sore, and constantly irritated.

In these cases, the issue isn’t intensity.
It’s that the muscle never really got a chance to switch off.

Muscles aren’t built to stay “on”

Under normal conditions, muscles don’t all work at once. Different fibres take turns doing the job, some work while others rest, then they swap. That rotation is what allows us to function for long periods without trouble.

Low-level effort held for a long time breaks that rhythm. Certain fibres stay switched on continuously instead of rotating out. These fibres aren’t designed to work for hours at a time.

The muscle doesn’t hurt because it worked hard.
It hurts because it worked without a break.

What happens when a muscle can’t switch off

When a muscle stays contracted, local blood flow drops. Oxygen delivery decreases, waste products build up, and the tissue becomes more sensitive.

Over time, pressure that normally wouldn’t hurt suddenly feels sharp or uncomfortable. On palpation, the tissue often feels dense or ropey, with one spot that stands out as particularly tender.

This is what we refer to as a myofascial trigger point, not a knot from heavy training, but tissue that’s been stuck in a state of constant activation.

This is also why strengthening alone often doesn’t fix the problem. Those fibres aren’t weak, they’re already doing too much. Adding more load without addressing that state simply reinforces the same pattern.

Where dry needling actually helps

This is where dry needling fits in.

When trigger points are present, the issue isn’t the structure of the muscle, it’s its state.
The local nerve–muscle connection is effectively stuck, continuing to fire when it should be resting.

Dry needling targets that specific area to interrupt the ongoing signal.
The goal isn’t to stretch the muscle or “break up” tissue, but to allow the muscle to switch off properly again.

That reset often changes how the muscle feels and moves straight away, not because it’s suddenly stronger, but because it’s no longer stuck in constant activation.

Dry needling doesn’t replace movement or exercise.
It removes a barrier, so movement and strengthening can actually work the way they’re meant to.

Why I keep pushing micro breaks

This is also why I consistently recommend micro breaks every 60 minutes.

Not to stretch or train, but to give muscles a chance to switch off before they get stuck in the first place.

Standing up, changing position, or taking a few slow breaths is often enough.
Those small resets can prevent low-level tension from turning into persistent trigger points.

Takeaway

Muscle pain doesn’t always come from doing too much.
Often, it comes from doing something small for too long without a break.

And when a muscle has been stuck in that state for a while, dry needling can be a useful way to reset it, so movement, exercise, and recovery actually start working again.