Sitting at a desk may be productive for your job but it can be unproductive for your body. One potential problem – upper cross syndrome. “Desk jockeys” – those who work at a desk for all or most of a workday are susceptible to this ailment.
Sitting all day can catch up to you, that’s why I encourage people to get up and walk around while at work. We live in a “lean forward” world where everything is in front of us. And this creates imbalances.
You start to develop very tight muscles in your upper back in your trap muscles. People carry a lot of stress in their upper back – the trap muscles. You also get very tight pectoral muscles and they become shorter and your shoulders begin to round.
At this point you develop weakness in the front of your neck and in your rhomboids. This is the musculature that runs horizontal to our shoulder blades – it pinches our shoulders. So we have a “X” of tightness combined with weakness. This leads to cascading effects and problems develop in other areas. Typically, patients with upper cross syndrome come in complaining of general neck problems that get progressively worse.
Tulsa Spine and Rehab deals with upper cross syndromes by first determining what the problem is and then deal with the mobility issues or the tightness in the two muscle groups. So once we get something moving we want to focus on the stabilizers in the neck. Strengthen that neck and those rhomboids. Once we start to open some things up, your chest is going to open up a little bit, your neck muscles will start working properly. Those rhomboids are going to pinch your shoulder blades and it will bring your head a little more upright and erect. This will take a lot of pressure and load off of your neck.
It’s basically the result of bad posture. Technically, it’s just coined as an upper cross syndrome. Once we get something moving properly, we turn our focus and start to address where we might be weak as well and that’s why stability on the back end is so very important.
You don’t have to be working at a physically taxing job all day to experience some significant aches and pains. Why not get it checked out and get some relief? Call Tulsa Spine and Rehab at (918) 743-3737.
Listen to the podcast of this post here:
032717
Podcast: Play in new window
