June, 2020
NEWSLETTER
POSTURE, PECTORALS, & PROBLEMS
Whether you have pain or have been suffering for a long time, seeing a physical therapist at Appalachian Physical Therapy, Inc. can help you return to a more active and pain-free life. Give us a call at: • Broadway: 540-901-9501 • Harrisonburg: 540-209-8977 • Pinehurst: 910-215-0541 Today is no different. One of the biggest problems I see from a physical therapy standpoint is a significant amount of tightness with our pectoral (pects) musculature on the front side of our chest. These huge and powerful muscles help with pulling our arms across our bodies. They also are responsible for internally rotating our arms or turning in our hands when we let our arms hang down by our sides. One can quickly assess if a person has tightness in these muscles by looking at them with their arms hanging down when at rest. So what’s the big deal? The big deal begins with poor posture that is often caused by muscling up the front of the chest with weakness in the muscles about the shoulder blades. Also due to shortening of the pects, people are exposed to problems such as impingement of the shoulders, intermittent numbness and tingling of their hands and even significant headaches (HA’s) to name a few and the list goes on. Strengthening is great, don’t get me wrong. There has to be a happy medium with stretching to allow for good mobility. Strength is worthless if it cannot be used. I have seen folks that really wanted to have a large chest only to be uncoordinated and not able to bounce a basketball. Improper posture and strength overloads structures and will lead to impairment and possibly surgery: all the time. This is one of the things we deal with on a daily basis. Ask any physical therapy shop and they will tell you the same thing. Never and I mean never have I ever seen anyone with an insufficient pect that needed strengthening. It just doesn’t happen. (continued inside)
I remember looking at comic books when I was a kid and I always remember scenes from a big bully all muscled up picking on a less endowed fellow at the beach. He of course was pushed into the sand in front of his beautiful girlfriend and the bully walks off with his girl. This was an ad that was burned into my brain as a kid buying bazooka bubble gum that had the same type of scene. I can
only guess you have seen similar ads that you can remember as well. At any rate this causes the less endowed guy to go and learn martial arts or lift weights and then to approach this bully later on in life and he walks off into the sunset with his girl back by his side. Lifting weights was always a part of my growing up in life. I was a sports nut and participated in three sports year round. To keep in shape and gain strength, weight lifting was a part of my life for several years. It certainly helped me gain strength however there was less than sufficient guidance to help me along the way. Yes we had coaches and maybe an occasional trainer to guide us but really no one that actually worked directly with us on a regular basis. It really is amazing none of us that I remember was actually injured with all we did. I mean we really pushed ourselves pretty hard at the time.
Subscribe to receive our digital newsletters on our website today!
www.aptfc.com
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator