Upper Back Strain?

Upper Back Strains

If you are experiencing pain on your upper back, specifically between your shoulder blades, you may have a rhomboid strain or spasm. The rhomboids are muscles that pull your shoulders back and rotate your scapulae down. They also act as a stabilizer, positioning the scapulae onto the thoracic wall. Activation of these muscles help to maintain proper posture while standing, sitting, and walking. When not activated, the shoulders can protrude forward, leading to poor posture and upper back pain. 

 A rhomboid strain or spasm is usually caused from repetitive motions or other overuse of the shoulder. Some of these include overhead activities such as pitching, serving a tennis ball, rowing, carrying a heavy load such as a backpack, and sustained poor posture for long periods of time. A strain may cause pain in between your shoulder blades and can be assessed by your physical therapist.

Your physical therapist will help you strengthen and stretch the muscles in your upper back and shoulders in order to correct any existing muscle imbalances and to improve your posture. They also may incorporate some modalities into your treatment such as ice, ultrasound, and soft tissue work. All of these approaches will work off of one another to manage pain and inflammation.  In order to facilitate the healing process, you will need to modify your activities in order to avoid anything that aggravates your upper back pain. Your PT will most likely prescribe a home exercise program to complete between visits. You and your physical therapist will become partners in your healing; they will give you the tools you need to get yourself better in a timely manner. Following this plan is important to speed up recovery.  A mild strain should heal within 4-6 weeks while more severe strains may take longer.

There are a few actions you can take to prevent rhomboid muscle strains or spasms:

• Be sure to warm up and cool down before and after your workouts

• Perform dynamic stretches before activity and static stretches after activity 

• If you have a desk job, set an alarm on your device to remind you to take breaks and move around every 45 minutes

• Practice proper technique while playing sports

• If you wear a backpack, make sure to carry it on both shoulders

Here are some exercises that can help with upper back pain due to rhomboid sprains and spasms:

• Shoulder Retractions: Sit or stand with your arms at your sides. Draw your shoulder blades together while bringing them down and back. Hold this position for 5 seconds and repeat for 1 minute

• Rhomboid Stretch: Extend your arms out in front of you, stacking your right hand over your left. Hold this position for 30 seconds and then switch sides. Repeat for a total of 3 times on each side. 

• Neck Rotations: Sit upright at the edge of a chair. Inhale while turning your head to the right and hold at the end of your range for 30 seconds while taking deep breaths. Repeat on the left side. Do this for a total of 3 times on each side.

Got upper back pain? Call us today to make an appointment! Call- 1-718-258-3300

About Evolve Physical Therapy in Brooklyn-

Got Pain? Schedule a Consultation Today! Walk Ins Welcome.

There’s physical therapy, there’s training, and then there’s EVOLVE. We use the science of biomechanics merged with fitness to help our patients get better and stay better!

First we evaluate, then we heal, then we strengthen our clients so they can reach their goals, feel better, and live happier lives. We do so by utilizing a range of core techniques and specialized treatments to reduce pain, improve mobility, enhance physical strength and deal with the underlying issues, not just the pain itself.

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Prehabilitation for Sports Related Injuries

How to Prevent Sports Injury Through Prehabilitation Services

It is known that exercising enhances both physical and mental health, but the real question is – when do its effects actually start making a change in your body? The answer is a quite relieving and studies have shown that as little as one carefully planned and dosed training session can significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack! That is, if you remain consistent and attend your workouts continuously.

Here at Evolve, we can give you the opportunity to prevent things like this from happening. Whether it’s a heart condition, or a common sports related injury like tears or muscle pulls, by conducting prehabilitation exercises you can lessen your chances of an injury. Better safe than sorry, believe me!

Why would you need prehab?

Unlike rehabilitation which represents physical therapy after a certain injury or operation, prehab consists of well-structured and supervised exercises that ameliorate the outcome of a surgery, or lower the risk of training accidents of players on the field. That kind of preparation can be beneficial to your recovery, whatever situation you’re in. Leave your excuses at home, because here at Evolve physical therapy in Brooklyn, we can give you a variety of choices for you to better the odds when it comes to your health.

The Benefits of Prehab Exercises

Physical therapy prior to intense exercise or any other medical procedure can be a crucial step in preventing injuries. I always say that in order for a professional athlete to endure the enormous stress they put on their body daily, they primarily need to be functional and have a healthy postural status. Same goes for everyone else, even if they aren’t in that kind of situation. Whether you need surgery, or you just want to participate for your overall well-being. I myself, along with my team of highly experienced physical therapists here at Evolve, can guide you through a wide range of exercises that will help you prevent accidents such as:

Prehab for Knee Injuries

Injuries of the knee joint are one of the most common among professional athletes, and in many cases very dangerous because they can easily end their career. However, they can happen to anyone, even if they don’t play a professional sport. At Evolve we like to do things strategically and that means approaching the issue from every possible angle, in order to prevent these knee injuries. Our primary goal is to strengthen the muscles surrounding the knee, meaning every one that produces knee flexion and extension - mainly quadriceps and biceps femoris muscle, along with other muscles that contribute to overall stability of the joint. The goal is that after you go through our treatment you will be able to easily perform every movement in the knee. We want to make sure that your full range of motion has been restored, and that it remains stable throughout every activity.

Prehabilitation for Cycling Injuries

Prehabilitation is a fantastic method for preventing injury while cycling. Cycling is a beautiful sport, and I personally love it very much. However, there is one thing we should all have in mind when we think of going cycling - it is a highly repetitive sport. In order for us to be able to keep pedaling on and on, we have to engage in this sort of activity well prepared. That means strengthening and conditioning muscles that stabilize joints and take all the impact of those high repetitions. Mainly we mean your hips, knees, and wrists. Not only do they need good support, but you must also be aware of all the other complications that can occur because of an uncomfortable, non-physiological position when sitting on a bike. Our team can conduct different training and physiotherapy sessions that will prevent pain in your cervical and thoracic spine, prevent injuries of ligaments surrounding lower extremity joints, and most importantly to help you be able to enjoy cycling as long as possible without feeling any discomforts!

Shoulder pain, Muscle Tears, Pulls and Other Sports Related Injuries

Shoulder injuries are one of the most common ones in sports that mainly require usage of the arms, such as basketball or baseball. Basketball players often have problems with shoulder pain when lifting arms above their head, and why wouldn’t they feel pain when this puts the shoulder joint in a very non-anatomic position? On the other hand, baseball players need to have strong enough posterior muscles of the shoulder joints, in order to avoid tearing of ligaments, glenoid labrum, and more. Besides these, all the other sports carry their risks, but let’s stick to most common cases.

If you feel pain, or if you suffered a muscle tear in the past, you shouldn’t let it happen to you again. There are ways we can help you ensure that you don’t. By performing functional movement patterns as an element of carefully planned and supervised physical therapy, you can achieve the proper posture, stability and overall functionality. Whether we talk about shoulder prehab exercises, or exercises that give you stability and strength in every other critical joint. Undergoing prehabilitation therapy like we offer here at Evolve might just be the missing element for you to have complete enjoyment when participating in sports activities.

What are the main goals of prehabilitation?

Sometimes the external forces that affect our body in various physical activities can be inevitable and dominant, and there is just nothing we can do to stop an injury from happening. This is very common with contact sports. However, I think that in many cases we alone are most responsible for our injuries. All too often we engage in activities while being inadequately prepared!

When I say inadequately, I mean we usually skip the warm up. In my opinion, this is a terrible decision. A moderate warm up will increase the blood flow through our muscles and make them more flexible, decreasing the risk of an injury. Simply put, a 10-minute

Investment of your time can save you weeks of taking painkillers!

Your muscles need to be well conditioned for every specific type of sport. If you jog every morning and then suddenly you decide you want to play football, you will have a major risk of hurting yourself. Every sport has its demands, and if you doubt your strength or overall stability that’s needed for it, undergoing prehab won’t bring you any harm.

Last but not least, you can always give your muscles a nice good stretch whenever you can. Whether you just finished working out, or right before you hit the pillow. Remember, everything you do to contribute to your overall well-being makes you maybe one step ahead of an unpleasant surprise. If you would like to learn more about our prehab services, feel free to give our team a call today.