RELEASE Upper Trapezius & Levator Scapulae Muscle Tension FOR GOOD

if you're looking to relieve upper trapezius and levator scapula tension then here's a tip stop stretching instead watch this video to discover the root causes and learn four effective exercises that Target these root causes for lasting [Music] relief good day it's coach e here from Precision movement and today I'm going to help you release oper trapezius and levator scapula tension and soreness which is largely in the areas around here lateral and posterior aspect of the neck now we're going to cover some background information and we're going to get into four exercises but before that one thing I did want to address was a comment that I often read here on YouTube which is basically hey enough talk just get to the exercises and while I freely admit that sometimes I could talk too much I truly believe that understanding the why behind the what can help you get better results and is in your best interest interest trust me I'm not doing this because I like hearing myself talk the other thing is we've got chapters set up on this video so if you want to skip to the exercises you can just find the Tim stamp where the exercises start and Skip on right over to that point so whether you're on the side where you like to understand or you want to just get to the exercises make sure you're subscribed because no matter what side you're on we take care of you now let's get into the background information here see I've named this the Cascade of compensations basically this answer is why why does the upper trapezius and the levator scapula get tight and the main answer for most people is right here poor you guessed it posture poor posture is such an issue and a common root cause for so many injures injuries and pain syndromes that we get in society these days so poor posture if we just fix your posture that might not be enough and the reason why is because of the compensations that occur and develop over time one of these compensations or a few of these compensations are right here increased upper trapezius and levator scapula muscle tension the reason why this happens is because when you're in poor posture you're stretching these muscles and your head goes forward it's the forward head posture for every inch your head travels forward your head essentially weighs an extra 10 pounds so that's 10 pounds of extra load for every inch your head goes forward that must be supported muscularly which muscles support the head when it goes forward the upper trapesius and the levator scapula so these muscles are working over time they're doing more than they should and when muscles work more than they should without a break because you're in forward head posture all the time that's when you get that tension the pain The Blood Flow Restriction the knots the headaches that can result of that there's so many problems that you could get from poor posture the other thing that happens with Poe posture is yes we've got the forward head and we've got that excessive curve through the thoracic spine which is between here and here pretty much when that's flexed you're shutting off multifidus muscle so these are some of the beginning compensations that happen from poor posture next up from that we get decreased lower trapezius and serus anterior function and these muscles are really important to balance out the upper trapezius especially when we're raising our arms up overhead if we're doing tennis serves or throwing baseballs or whatever we're doing with our arms arms up overhead when you have this imbalance between increased upper trap and levator scap and decreased lower trap and decreased aradius anterior the result is less scapular upward rotation so my scapula my hand is my scapula right here upward rotation is like that when you and it's supposed to happen when you lift your arm up overhead if it doesn't happen you get into impingement in the shoulder so that could be the Bersa that gets impinged the rotator cuff tendon that gets impinged and you get pain and inflammation as a result of that so this is what I call the Cascade of compensations that occurs over time when you have poor posture so that's why if you're just going to stretch your neck trying to relieve that tension or you're just going to get massages trying to relieve that tension and you don't address all of this stuff here you're not going to get last two results so that's a quick little Spiel on why we've got to address poor posture but also these other movement and activation patterns that we get over time for lasting relief and that's exactly what we're going to do with the four exercise that we're going to get to right now the first exercise is the segmental thoracic mobilization over the foam roller and we do this a little bit different than just hanging out over the edge we do incorporate a few different movements to get that active component that we preach in all of our videos in all of our programs that's a core part of our philosophy is activating muscles and turning everything into active training as opposed to passive training so start off with the roller under the lower part of the thoracic spine and you're doing three movements the first and you can support your neck if it's really sore and you're having trouble just holding your head up in this position support it with your hands the first movement is extending over the roller I like to inhale on the way up and then segmentally first tuck the chin and then flex the spine back up so you do this three times inhale on the way up relax and then segmentally flex the spine so that's two we'll do one more you might get some pops here and there that's a good thing and then we're going to extend over the roller and you're going to do side bends think of bringing your elbow toward your hip saying extend it over the roller and go three times in each Direction nice and slow keep everything on the roller and down stationary and you're only moving the joint that's just above the roller finally we're going to do a little rotation again to extend it over and and then rotate your El so your elbows Point around it's like a flashlight and you're scanning around you three times in each Direction breathing staying relaxed and once you're done that you move up and hit maybe three or four different areas of your thoracic spine and that's going to help you to restore that extension that is the opposite of Poe posture but also to wake up some of the muscles in the upper thoracic spine the multifidus and other deep muscles in there so that we can build the endurance in those muscles to maintain that good extended position throughout the day the second exercise we're going through is going to solidify the extended and good thoracic posture that we developed with the first exercise and it's going to solidify it by activating those deep muscles in the thoracic spine called the multifidus this exercise is called the Walling very simple exercise with some subtle cues first of all your setup you want to be about a foot away from the wall with your heels about a foot away from the wall and set yourself up in good posture so long cervical spine get away from your finger if it's coming from your chin you don't want your finger to touch your chin so make those double chins and then bring your shoulders back without hyperextending the lumbar spine so not a lot of tension through those lumbar muscles and not a lot of tension through the ABS keep that rib cage down so I should be able to breathe and stay relaxed in this position for a second and from here keeping my mouth closed and the tongue at the roof of my mouth I'm just going to bring my hips off the wall I'm going to look up so that my body is straight kind of on an incline or a decline looking up in front of me breathing holding that for about 10 seconds to start keeping the rib cage down don't let it flare and keep the spine long as you're holding so think of extending the spine into the wall lower down slowly just for a second relax everything and then set yourself up again so long spine chin tucked shoulders back relax through the abdominals keep the rib cage down relax through the lumbar spine and then Bridge up off the wall mouth closed breathing through through the nose holding for about 10 seconds and then down so start off doing this for two sets four to six reps holding for 10 seconds and then as you repeat this routine that we're going through today decrease the Reps to maybe two to four reps and increase the time of holding to between 20 and 30 seconds and that's going to help you to develop the endurance in these deep multifidus muscles that you need to be able to maintain good posture effortlessly all day long the third exercise we're going through is a bit counterintuitive in that when people experience muscular tension and soreness the first inclination is to stretch what we're going to do is we're going to actually activate that muscle and the reason why this helps to decrease tension is because you'll learn how to control the muscle and activate it and work it and even fatigue it but then shut it off and relax it and this might give you some really immediate relief if you're experiencing that upper trap tension right now this is known as a dissociation exercise it's one of our unique methods that we use here at Precision movement and what we're doing is we're dissociating upper trap and shoulder shrugging or shoulder elevation from forward head because that's often the position that we get in and when we shrug our shoulders we often JW our heads forward so we're going to break that common movement pattern and we're going to activate those upper traps to a good degree which will help to get some relaxation on the other side so you start off in bad posture here so jut that head forward round and flex that Thora spine and from here you're going to straighten up Tuck the chin as you elevate the shoulders and the scapula keep the chin tucked don't look up but look forward and keep activating those upper trap muscles as you're holding for about 5 Seconds at the top and then relax and start again so bad posture shrugging good posture holding keep activating the upper trap muscles bring your shoulders towards your ears for about 5 seconds and then you repeat let me show you a straight side view here because one mistake one error that people often make when they do this you start off it's easy to start off in bad posture that's the normal for most people and then we straighten up but then the shoulder girdle is forward we're not getting the shoulder griddle back into its good position so if you're doing this and your palms are facing the front of your thighs then that means your shoulders are rounded forward so we want to have the Palms facing the sides of our legs the sides of our thighs here as we're holding so again we're holding chin is tucked we're not looking up hands are facing the thighs and I'm shrugging the shoulders so this is going to activate those arit trap muscles and then when you're relaxing between reps your body's going to learn how to relax that muscle and shut it off so this can really help help you relieve some of that tension and it's going to help to retrain and break this common dysfunctional movement pattern which is whenever you shrug your shoulders your head Jets forward and that's the position we find ourselves in when we're typing and we're in really bad lazy posture do this exercise for two to three sets four to six reps holding for about 5 Seconds at the top the fourth and final exercise is targeted at restoring the activation and strength of the lower trapezius and the seratus anterior if you remember from the background these muscles tend to get weaker because when the upper trap and the levator scapula are strong and they're working over time to keep your head in this position to support the head you'll your body will shut off the lower trap and the seratus to make the job easier for the upper trap because those muscles they counter the activation of the upper trap and if they're working hard at the same time it's just going to be overall more work work for your body so your body Just sh your brain just shuts off the lower trap and Rus and that allows that upper trap to work a little bit less even though it's already working a lot harder because of the forward head this exercise I call the lower trap activator and if you want more information on this on the lower trap we've got another video which will'll link up here or down in the description below but this exercise you need some type of resistance band it can even just be a belt or a piece of rope that you tie around an anchor Point set it up about elbow level and then you get your arm into that bend and put it just above the elbow now you don't need a lot of tension for this for this exercise just step out a little bit so you have a bit of tension right here from the start and then it's bring the elbow closer to the sides that shoulder adduction adduction and then you're just going to round the shoulder back and what I call posterior rotation of the shoulder girdle it's like posterior tilt of the scapula so you think of of those two motions the shoulder girdle rounding and the scapula posteriorly tilting hold that for 5 seconds and then release and relax and repeat so I'm going to show you from the side view what you don't want to do so you start off you bring your elbow close to the side and what a lot of people think of and do is they row and then drive that elbow back but as you can see what happens to my shoulder is it anteriorly rotates rotates downwards we don't want that that's causing more impingement and working more of what we don't want so it's bring the elbow to the side and then posteriorly rotate the shoulder girdle and tilt posteriorly tilt the scapula so that's the position that you're holding in maintaining that good posture throughout otherwise and breathing and then release in between and then you repeat so that is the lower lower trap activator that's the key aspect of that exercise you need that posterior tilt of the scapula that gets the seratus going and you need that posterior rotation of the entire shoulder girdle which will help to further activate the lower trapezius so that was the routine four exercises there we're going to go through a quick summary now we started off with the segmental thoracic mobilization for this you do three reps of three different moves on three to four areas of the spine the second exercise we did was the wall lean do that for two sets of four to six repetitions holding for 10 seconds then decrease the repetitions down to two to four repetitions holding for 20 to 30 seconds next we did the dissociation technique dissociating forward head from shoulder elevation for this do two sets of four to six repetitions holding for 5 seconds and we finished off with the lower trap activator do this for two to three sets four to six reps holding each activation for five seconds so that's how we're going to release tension in the upper traps and the Le levator scapula for good and it's by addressing those root causes not just doing static stretches not just getting massage or heat or stem or whatever else you could do that's passive but actively retraining and repatterning how we move our bodies so thank you for joining me I hope this was enlightening and I hope you experienced benefits from it which is decreased pain if you did let us know in the comments comments make sure you're subscribed and if you want some more because this is a big topic and addressing pore posture is a bigger topic than just what's covered in this video we' got another video here on posture we got a video here that's really good for seratus anterior exercises and finally if you've got shoulder or neck pain that's been around for a little while check out our shoulder pain solution because this takes the approach that you just learned about in this video and multiplies it by 10 so check that program out and if you decide take it up I'll see you in there

Channel: Precision Movement

Views: 81,321

Keywords: upper traps exercises, upper traps, upper trapezius, levator scapulae, levator scapula, neck pain, neck pain exercises, shoulder pain, serratus anterior, upper trap pain, upper trapezius stretch, upper trapezius release, upper trapezius pain, levator scapulae stretch, levator scapulae release

Id: iwIiqaTXAq4

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 29 2023