Case Study

I recently had a customer who had a sharp pain and burning sensation in between the shoulder blades for aprox 3 weeks with no results from chiropractic, or personal training with weights. This client had a bad case of rounded shoulders (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome).

This client is very physically active, works as a computer engineer and is middle age male who happens to be in physically great shape for his age, from many years of playing ice hockey, as puts it. He came to see me on a recommendation from his wife, with an assumption that I could not offer anything that would be of help for him.

I could quickly see that he was very strong, often telling me in our session, how great his personal trainer was, on how much he could now bench press, squat etc. After asking him what a typical workout routine consist of, I was not surprised when he told me how much he loved to work on his chest and biceps muscles.

He was shocked when I told him that he needed to eliminate, the bench pressing and biceps curls for a few weeks. This was something that he did not want to hear, I mean he was making more progress now with his workouts than he ever has. I explain to him using a favorite analogy of mine why he needed to give up the bench press for a while. Your muscles of your upper back and rear shoulders in relation to your chest and bicep muscles, is like,

“Imagine if you were holding on the edge of a cliff, your hands or grip, are your rear delts, rotator cuff and rhomboids, and your Pectoral muscles (chest) are like having a 25lb. weight around your ankles”

With this dynamic going on, it is only a matter of time before your hands (rear Deltoids, Rhomboids and Trapezius) muscles give out and lose their grip strength, the end result, being that your chest muscles are pulling constantly on its opposing muscles, thus weakening them over a period of time.

Lengthening the muscles of the chest, by deep muscle work and stretching (yoga or doorway stretches) and then implementing a counter strengthening program to de-accelerate the pulling to the front. This particular client never returned, I personally think that he did not want to give up his strengthening program. You can only try and help not all advice will be received well.

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