Lets talk about that thing that anyone who works at a desk can relate to. The feeling that your upper shoulder muscles need to be removed and steam rolled before you will tolerate them being back in your neck again. Upper crossed syndrome is a postural problem where the shoulders and neck start to hunch forwards causing muscle shortening in the front of the chest and upper shoulders and then the muscles in the lower shoulder blade region become long and weak. This is a common cause of the classic “boulders in the shoulders” tension sensation and can also leave your neck and shoulders vulnerable to further problems.
Often stretching or massaging the key tight areas never feels like it is enough to give relief. It can also leave the neck feeling like it cant turn as far as it should. You can experiment with this yourself: try exaggerating and hunch your shoulders forwards to their fullest range, now try and turn your head left and right. You should find that it doesn’t work very well any more. You may have noticed that as long as your shoulders are protracted (pushing forwards) those muscles in the shoulders can never fully loosen. This is because the upper trapezius and levator scapulae muscles are being drawn in a mechanically awkward position where they are overcompensating all the time for the postural problems. Now lets talk about controlling it The pectoral muscle group is the first thing you want to think about. Pectoralis major is the bigger muscle on the surface and pectoralis minor is under it. Both of these muscles need to be lengthened first.
You can do this by combining the use of a door frame and a ball (around baseball size). Place your hand behind your back and press the ball into the muscles in the front of the chest. Lean forwards into the door frame using your body weight. Think about that shoulder joint and pretend you are trying to use the ball to push the whole shoulder assembly back creating a stretch in the muscle and the feeling that the joint is being retracted back. Next you need to think about how you are going to keep your shoulders back. This can take the form of band strengthening or wall angel exercise.
Here’s a short video to give you some details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpzUVEfG5VA Got it? Great! Now you should find that deep tissue massage in the key sore areas will be far more effective. The myotherapist team at Back in Motion will be happy to help you regain control of your shoulders and help deep tissue out the remaining tension.