Why Your Pain Keeps Coming Back: MAT, Inflammation & Flowpresso

By Jennifer Schwartz, Founder and MAT Rx Specialist at Impact Your Fitness Studio

How much real estate is pain taking up in your brain?

The nagging shoulder you plan your workouts around. The tightness you check on every morning. The flare-up you're always half-expecting. Chronic pain doesn't just limit your body. It drains your energy and your attention, and it decides how hard you get to train.

Now imagine getting that space back. Pushing harder in your workouts instead of working around a problem. Spending your energy on the habits that actually move you forward. That's what happens when your body is optimized, and in my experience, the piece most people are missing is inflammation.

What MAT Does

Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT) is built on a simple principle: muscle tightness is often protective, and it usually shows up because another muscle isn't contracting efficiently. When a muscle stops communicating well with your nervous system, others tighten to compensate. Over time, that becomes the stiffness, limited range of motion and pain you feel.

As a MAT Rx Specialist, my job is muscle communication. I test individual muscles, find the ones that aren't firing well, and use precise activation techniques to restore that connection. When muscles communicate properly, your joints are supported, the guarding eases, and you get more pain-free, dynamic movement.

The Missing Piece: Inflammation

Here's what I've learned working with chronic pain: restoring muscle communication is essential, but it isn't always enough on its own.

Inflammation changes the environment your muscles and joints live in. It brings swelling, pressure and inflammatory byproducts into the tissue, and it keeps sensitive structures on high alert. Even when we get a muscle firing again, a congested, inflamed environment can pull the body right back into its old protective patterns.

That's why some pain keeps returning. The communication improves, but the environment hasn't changed. To make results stick, we need to address both.

Your Lymphatic System: More Than Drainage

Most people think of the lymphatic system as the body's drainage network. It is, but research shows it does much more than move fluid.

Lymphatic vessels carry inflammatory molecules and immune cells out of tissue and into the lymph nodes, which means they play an active role in regulating inflammation, not just a passive one. Researchers now describe lymphatics as central to three things: fluid balance, immune cell traffic and immune regulation. Studies also suggest a healthy lymphatic network is needed for inflammation to actually resolve.

The joint research is especially relevant if you live with arthritis or chronic joint pain. Studies on inflammatory arthritis have found that when lymphatic drainage from a joint declines, inflammation and joint damage get worse, and when drainage improves, damage is reduced. Much of this work is in animal models, so it isn't proof that any single therapy treats arthritis. But it makes the connection clear: how well fluid moves out of a joint matters for how that joint feels.

In the studio, I see this connection play out all the time. When we add Flowpresso, fluid movement in and out of the joint improves remarkably fast, both with new injuries and with chronic problem areas. I've felt it myself: my own right ankle and knee improved remarkably once I made Flowpresso part of my routine.

Your lymphatic system also needs regulation. When your nervous system is stuck in sympathetic overdrive, the fight-or-flight state that chronic pain and stress keep switched on, lymph flow slows and the whole system becomes dysregulated. This is where Flowpresso is especially supportive: MAT helps restore muscle communication, and Flowpresso helps regulate both the lymphatic and nervous systems.

Lymph flow also tends to become more sluggish with age. A 2018 study in Nature by Da Mesquita and colleagues found that lymphatic vessels around the brain decline with age in mice, slowing the clearance of waste from the brain and contributing to cognitive decline. It's one striking example of how much healthy lymphatic function matters as we get older.

How Fascia Connects It All

Fascia is the continuous web of connective tissue that wraps every muscle, nerve, vessel and organ. It's also where muscle communication and lymph flow meet.

Fascia is a sensory tissue. A systematic review led by fascia researcher Carla Stecco found it is richly supplied with nerve endings, mostly receptors for body position and for pain, and that pain receptors become more numerous when fascia is unhealthy. That helps explain why restricted fascia can hurt and why it shapes how your nervous system controls movement.

The same research group notes that superficial fascia likely plays a key role in lymphatic drainage, and that restricted or densified fascia is associated with chronic stiffness, reduced strength, abnormal movement patterns and altered lymphatic drainage.

Put simply: stiff, congested fascia affects both how your muscles fire and how well fluid moves out of your tissue. Address one without the other, and the pattern tends to come back.

Why I Pair MAT with Flowpresso

MAT restores the communication. Flowpresso improves the environment that communication happens in.

Flowpresso is a medical-grade, full-body lymphatic system that combines three things:

• Sequential compression that moves in a rhythmic wave toward your central circulation, supporting lymph and venous flow
• Infrared heat that warms and softens fascia so tissue can glide
• Deep-pressure stimulation that calms the nervous system and helps muscles release protective tension

The research on compression and heat is promising, though modest. A 2025 meta-analysis of 27 studies found pneumatic compression produced small but meaningful reductions in soreness and pain. A Cochrane review found heat therapy reduced back pain and disability in the short term, and that combining heat with active work improved results further. That last finding mirrors exactly what we do: passive support paired with active neuromuscular work.

For my MAT clients and anyone managing chronic pain, Flowpresso helps reduce swelling and pressure, supports clearance of inflammatory waste, and creates a better healing environment for the muscle work to hold. In my clinical experience, nothing has addressed this piece as quickly or as effectively.

Kelly's Story

Kelly is my longest-standing client, and one of my favorite MAT and Flowpresso success stories.

For years, we did great work together. But the same patterns kept showing up weak in her testing, and her upper-body tightness through the shoulder, neck and elbow stayed manageable without ever really resolving. We weren't getting ahead of it. Along the way, we found ways to manage her stress, which absolutely added to her discomfort and inflammation. Those changes helped, but nothing supported her body's performance as quickly as adding Flowpresso.

Once she started regular sessions, things we had worked on in her shoulder for years finally started holding. In MAT, when someone can't move symmetrically, we assign isometrics to stabilize the area and create an environment for symmetrical, pain-free movement. Kelly had been in that stabilizing phase for a long time. With Flowpresso in the mix, she moved past those humps quickly, and she and her virtual trainer could finally start actually strengthening her pecs and deltoids instead of just stabilizing them.

Today, Kelly does Flowpresso twice a month and MAT once a month. She works a physical job and exercises regularly without disruption from joint inflammation. She trains harder, and she gets to spend her energy on other healthy habits instead of on pain.

It's been an honor to contribute to her health this way.

What to Expect

• The session: you'll relax in the Flowpresso suit for [session length] while it cycles through compression, warmth and deep pressure. Most clients describe it as a warm, full-body hug.
• How it fits with MAT: Flowpresso works before or after MAT, but we recommend scheduling it before your MAT session or on a different day.
• How often: Flowpresso can be done weekly. If weekly isn't realistic, start with a 4-week reset of weekly sessions, then maintain with 2 sessions a month.
• Afterward: many clients feel lighter, looser and calmer. Prioritize good hydration and gentle movement to support the effects.

Everyone responds differently, and persistent or unexplained swelling or pain should always be evaluated by a healthcare professional. I'm happy to talk through whether Flowpresso is a good fit for you.

Better Communication, Better Environment

Pain-free movement takes two things: muscles that communicate well and an environment where they can heal. MAT gives you the first. Flowpresso supports the second. Together, that's how results stick.

New to the studio? Try Flowpresso with a free demo, no strings attached. Text 571-473-2287 for the scheduling link, or learn more about Flowpresso.

Impact Your Fitness | 105 Oronoco Street, Suite 200B, Alexandria, VA 22314 | Text 571-473-2287

Resources

Want to dig into the research yourself? Here's what this article draws on.

Lymphatics and inflammation

• Lymphatic Vessels in Inflammation, Journal of Clinical and Cellular Immunology
• Inflammation-associated lymphangiogenesis: a review, PubMed Central

Lymphatics and aging

• Functional aspects of meningeal lymphatics in ageing and Alzheimer's disease, Da Mesquita et al., Nature (2018)

Lymphatics and joint inflammation

• Lymphatic drainage and severity of inflammation in chronic arthritis, Arthritis & Rheumatism
• Targeting lymphatic function as a therapeutic intervention for rheumatoid arthritis, PubMed Central

Fascia, pain and lymphatic drainage

• Fascial Innervation: A Systematic Review of the Literature, International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Fascia as a multi-purpose structure of connective tissue, Frontiers in Medicine

Compression and heat

• From fads to facts: a meta-analysis of intermittent pneumatic compression for muscle recovery, Strength and Conditioning Journal
• Lower-limb intermittent pneumatic compression and sports recovery, Biology of Sport
• Superficial heat or cold for low-back pain, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

Keep learning: Season 2 of the Impact Your Fitness podcast is all about lymphatic health and Flowpresso, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.