I strained my left calf last week after playing a couple day of soccer in a row and my low back. I have been hearing a lot about dry needling for soft tissue injuries and I thought I would give it a try. My colleague Dr. Bill Booker and one of the chiropractors I use at Capital Rehab brought up a great point about playing back to back games which pros do not typically do.
The idea of dry needling is to break up tight muscle tissue by stimulating trigger points. Be advised that the treatment itself can make you feel a little squeamish for a moment. I had three thin needles placed in 3 different trigger points in sequence. Then the needles were moved in my leg in a stick shift like motion, which was not a fun few seconds. Sometimes electric current is run through the needles. The day of the treatment my leg was sore to stand on, as I was advised it would be. It is difficult to say how much the one treatment helped. it did feel less sore the next day but when I played soccer the following week the injury reactivated and it was still sore. The treatment seems most appropriate for intractable pain and it is unclear to me how much it helped my calf strain recovery.