Midback Pain is a Common Reason People Come to See Me!
I recently added this blog page to my updated website. I hope to make it casual, fun and informative.
First up - I personally have been doing physical therapy for my shoulder and it has gotten me thinking about the way so much of the neck and shoulder pain as well as headaches that I see in my massage clients are related to the common head forward posture. These days, we are addicted to flexion in our everyday lives (and if you don’t know what flexion is, think of the fetal curve). Our heavy heads weigh 10-11 pounds and our necks, atop forward bending shoulders, are hardly able to hold them up- no wonder shoulder, neck and midback pain is a common reason to show up on my massage table!
As we reach forward for the keyboard from a seated position, muscles in the mid back, between the shoulder blades, get overstretched and lock long. It feels as if they are tight but instead of being shortened into a knot, they are actually overstretched and no longer able to pull the shoulders back to support the head and neck. And the poor neck reaches out to better see that computer screen; the muscles at the front of the neck get long and don’t fire correctly, as the muscles at the base of the skull in back do extra duty to hold the head up.
As a massage therapist, I help by balancing the muscles front to back while suggesting ways for clients to strengthen muscles that have “turned off.” The muscles need to be strong in order to do their job in a relaxed position, not overstretched and “holding.”
To minimize the forward reach of your neck try lowering your computer monitor so that the TOP is at eye level.
Some of the main muscles that commonly need strengthening are the mid and lower trapezius. (It’s the upper traps that have your shoulders up around your ears; they probably don’t need any extra work!) A good, shorthand way to think about engaging the mid-back muscles is to pull you shoulder blades together (from the area between them). Don’t just force your shoulders back, use the area between your shoulder blades, and think that you are going to put them in your hip pocket. Or, you can stand in a door frame, leaning against the edge and pull your shoulder blades together around the door frame. In either case, hold it about 10-15 seconds and repeat maybe 10 times.