The Shoulder Blade Squeeze – What Is It Good For?
Posture! Our sedentary society encourages the slumped posture. Shoulder blade postural muscles weaken as the pectoral muscles in the front of the chest become tight and pull the shoulders forward. Poor posture results from the imbalance of these muscles in the front and back of the trunk.
The shoulder blade squeeze stretches the pectoral muscles and activate the shoulder blade muscles along the rib cage. You might even gain a couple of vertical inches if you straighten out your upper back.
For the best results, let the theraband lie in the palms of your hands, facing upwards. Point your thumbs outward as you feel the theraband become taut as your hands move away from your trunk. Bent your elbow to about 90 degrees. Tighten your abdomen as your shoulder blades come together and as a result you will sit straighter.
A Headache Help
Poor posture has been linked to headaches. Some of my clients improve their headaches considerably when their posture is corrected. You are unique, and your combination of headache triggers are unique. If a slumped posture is one of those triggers, you can easily remove it out of your headache equation.
Help for Jaw Pain and Clicking
A standard treatment for temporomandibular jaw treatment is shoulder blade pullback exercises. Your jaw may subtly re-position itself in the process and decrease your clicking. Other clients see absolutely no change in their jaw symptoms with the exercise. The results of a posture correction on your jaw will quickly become clear.
Why use a theraband to tighten the shoulder blades?
Build up your strength more effectively with resistive theraband, which works better than simply contracting your muscles in thin air. Psychologically and physiologically your arms will appreciate the sense of contracting with something to push against.
The shoulder blade squeeze fits the theraband better than other exercises. For instance, I prefer using dumbbells rather than theraband for clients for working the biceps and other lifting muscles as a more realistic functional exercise. However, you cannot easily use a dumbbell easily to activate your shoulder blade muscles. You would need to lie on your side in an awkward position and rotate the weight upwards. Your chance of irritating your rotator cuff increases.
Never do theraband exercises if you find the pressure in the tips of your shoulders instead of your shoulder blades. Stop if pain increases. You should feel pressure throughout the muscle groups in the arms and shoulder blades, never concentrated in one area near the rotator cuff area.
Exercise Should be Easy to Follow Through With
The theraband shoulder squeeze is not complicated to do. You could do more sophisticated and fancy exercises, but that is the point. Watch TV as you sit being entertained.
Straighten your spine instead of slumping in your sofa! You spend no extra time doing the shoulder blade squeeze. You are just sitting around anyway! However, even with the simplest of exercises, compliance is determined by motivational rather than difficulty reasons.
Meditation with Movement
Certain exercises can relax your mind as well. If you have a straightforward activity you can do repetitively without thinking, such as walking, running, cross country skiing and so on you can learn to let your mind go as your body moves automatically without much conscious effort by you.
Achieve this meditation-type effect by doing the theraband scapular squeeze, breathe out as your arms move away from the center as the band resistance. Inhale during the recovery phase as you slacken the theraband and your arms come back to the center.
Make the Exercise Fit You Rather than You Trying to Fit the Exercise
Check out the exercise research by Tucci in the Journal Spine, which you may find is very practical for you. The concepts presented in this article have borne themselves out over the past several decades with my clients.
You may be surprised to find you can gain strength simply by exercising just once a week! How much easier is it for you to work out just once a week and still gain strength rather than running to the gym three times a week?
There is a caveat, though. The study reported you lose anywhere from 55 to 70% of your strength in the target muscles groups if you don’t work them over a 8-12 week period. They examined the back muscles in this case. Personally, I have noted a dramatic arm strength loss with de-training when I have laid off the weights during the summer. As I return to lifting dumbbells in the fall, my capacity becomes pathetic after a several month break. Fortunately, the once-a-week-workout quickly restores the lost capability.
The study indicates that the trade-off for only doing an exercise once is week is that you need to apply yourself on that one workout per week. Perform an exercise range of 10-20 reps, for 3 to 5 sets. Get up to 100 reps if you so choose.
A variety of vicissitudes in your life may make it difficult to exercise regularly. Pick the primary target muscle groups you want to work and stick with your program. Stick with the theraband shoulder blade squeeze as it is an exercise that gives you much benefit for the time spent!
-You understand that if not done properly, some techniques and exercises described in this blog could harm you. Any activities you perform are at your own risk, and you expressly agree to waive any claims against the author for any harm that may arise from your own actions. By reading this blog and conducting these exercises, you accept this risk. This blog provides content related to physical and/or mental health issues. As such, your use of techniques described acts as your acceptance of this disclaimer. Consult Chapter 2 in my book, “Calming the Headache Storm” to make sure the headache is not the sign of a more serious problem. The techniques, advice and strategies contained in this blog may not be suitable for every individual and should be abandoned if your headache increases. Seek the advice of your physician.