Fix Rhomboid Pain Now (Shoulder Blade Knots!)

Have you been dealing with rhomboid pain or shoulder blade pain that feels like a deep knot between your scapulae? In this video, I’m going to show you how to fix rhomboid pain by addressing the real cause of the problem and walking you through 5 moves that can help relieve pain in the upper back, i

Do you have pain in this whole area that’s really hard to get to? I’m going to help you today because to target this, you likely are probably trying to target the muscles when that’s not going to get to the bottom of the issue. It’s the underlying joints that aren’t moving properly that’s causing these muscles to lock up. We got to fix that and we’re going to start right here on the floor. And the focus of your effort has to be at least on feeling the fact that you don’t have this mobility that you need.

So, I had to get down this position on all fours. You’re on your forearms flat on the floor and on your knees. Your What could be up here in the air? And what we do is we basically allow ourselves to drop straight down to where the shoulder blades pinch together. And this should actually happen pretty naturally for you because gravity is helping you to fall straight down towards the ground.

But when you come back out of this, you try to leave your elbows down and push through the floor as you lift your chest as high as you can. That’s protraction. You’ll be surprised to see how much of this mobility you actually have and you never actually really even experienced cuz you stopped moving a long time ago. All you have to do is just get the sense of what it’s supposed to feel like to move that way cuz let’s be honest, it’s probably been a long time since it has. Now, of course in the last exercise, you may not have a whole hell of a lot of range of motion to move through, but that’s where we do this which is going to help you with that.

We call this a wall splat. It’s so easy to do on any wall. You want to put your hands up and out wide. You don’t want to have them too narrow because people with shoulder issues might find that to be uncomfortable. But when you open them up to about 2:00 and 10:00 on a clock, you’re good to go.

Now, you step back with one leg and what we’re going to do here is try to just allow our hips to sink and our chest to move towards the wall. And the knee is actually attempting to touch the wall as we go in, closer and closer every single time. You’re going to feel yourself extending more through that locked up area. Now, if you’ve worked that sagittal plane of motion, that front to back lack that you’re having right now through your thoracic spine, what can we do about the rotation that you’re missing cuz it needs to rotate and you’re not doing enough of it. What we can do a can opener.

What you do is you put one forearm down here flat and pointing straight ahead towards you, and the other one’s going to go and put your hand on the back of your head. Now, all I want you to do is open this arm up, rotate up towards the ceiling as high as you can, and push down through this elbow and forearm to allow you to get some more of that height. And you should try to get at least to this 45° angle if possible. Keep working on opening up further and further in successive attempts here, and I promise you the reintroduction of some rotation to a spine that’s sorely lacking it is going to feel really, really damn good. And now, we could do what we call the 11:15 stretch.

What we want to do is lay flat on the floor, then put your arm straight out up over your head. Now, even this could be step one of making you feel a hell of a lot better, cuz what you’re going to do is just try to drop your chest straight down to the floor. Try to reach your sternum to touch the floor, cuz I can guarantee you, when your arms are up overhead, it’s not touching right now. So, if you reach further, you’re going to start to feel a little stretch right through this X marks the spot. Now, we’re going to take it to the next level, so I want you to start rotating to the other side, keeping this side of your body down on the ground.

In other words, this hip and outer thigh have to stay down. And when you reach, you reach for the 3:00 position on the clock, hence the 11:15 of the left arm and right arm. If you’re in this position now, don’t just hang out there. Actively try to pull your shoulder blade back so you get some activation of the muscles that you’re now starting to loosen up and waken up. And with your new found range into extension and rotation, this would be a great thing to follow it up with and tie it all together.

We call this a bridge and reach over. Not only are you getting that rotation and extension, but you’re also getting the glutes to participate, too. So, it’s sort of that kinetic chain from the bottom to the top, from your feet to your fingertips, everything working the way it should. Now, when it comes to keeping that pain away, strength is always going to be part of the equation. Here’s two exercises that you can do, regardless of what equipment you you access to.

The first one requires actually zero equipment at all. And what you have to do is just lay flat on your stomach and put those arms back overhead like we were in that other exercise. Cuz remember, just getting your chest down to the ground is going to help to get some of that thoracic extension mobility. But again, this is about strength. So, all you have to do is just slide your hands back along the floor at the same time lifting your chest off the ground.

By getting through lumbar extension here in the low back, you’re going to actually facilitate that thoracic extension that we’re looking for. But the strength component comes from the fact that your hands are in contact with the ground pushing your chest up. They have to actually be off the ground by just about an inch by the time they get back down next to your side. So, you’ll feel all these muscles here in the back, the ones that we’re trying to get strong to keep you in this improved position. And with just two to three sets of 10 to 12 high-quality repetitions done about two or three times a week, you have everything you need to do to make sure this stays strong and keeps that pain away for good.

And for those of you who are training at a gym or want that next-level strength exercise, when you’ve gotten to the point where you need more resistance, this is a weighted one you could do with a cable machine at your local gym. And what you do is grab the left handle with the right hand and the right handle with the left hand, and you round out the thoracic spine, exactly the opposite we’ve been talking about this whole time. But it’s setting you up for the proper exercise execution. Cuz from here, we’re going to pull our hands close to our chest and extend through that lumbar spine and lean back giving us that good combination of thoracic extension, again facilitated by that lumbar extension, and keeping those elbows tight and driving back behind your body to strengthen all those muscles. You can see that area that we’ve been targeting all along really effectively being hit on the exercise.

And again, it doesn’t take much. One exercise a couple times a week, two to three sets with well-executed repetitions, is all you’re going to need to do to strengthen this area to make sure that that pain doesn’t come back. And so with this targeted attack, you’re going to be able to focus on that area that’s causing problems right now. But if you’re one of the many that has a problem down here in the low back, I’ve got a video for you as well to help that out. You can find that one right here.

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