Does your posture look like a curvature? If so, this position applies a significant amount of strain on your suboccipitals and causes tension in your upper shoulders. This can result in tightness in our muscles located in the front of the chest, weakness in deep neck flexors, and tightness in the upper back muscles.
Well, the great news here is you're in good company. We see this all day, and yes, it's from usually working on a computer, but it's also from an inactivity or an over dominance of pressing. There are a multitude of reasons why this can occur. Typically, we notice this primarily with those with bad posture for a significant amount of time. Our bodies tend to compensate for the stress being applied in those positions.
Initially, we will analyze your posture during the consultation to see if your reasoning for your visit correlates with your postural status. We will then discuss what types of problems you are having, what positions cause your body the most stress, what kind of movements cause aggravation, and more.
It is not uncommon to have tighter chest muscles as well typically engage those muscles more than our back muscles. Hence, if you have noticed a multitude of individuals with rounded shoulders, or yourself included, this is why. To help with that anterior chest tightness, we can perform an array of stretches and exercises for the back muscles to help level your body out.
With tension in the upper back, we experience weakness in those front neck muscles. To help compensate for the tightness in the upper back, we will need to assess and potentially strengthen those muscles as well. It can also be presented the opposite way, where we may have tighter front neck muscles and need to work on strengthening the posterior neck muscles and the upper back.
We will run through an assortment of examinations or assessments including the range of motion, orthopedic examination, and neurological examinations. We will then form a diagnosis with a treatment plan suited to your needs as our patient.
