Bill, ??? about my rhomboid

[Bond007]

I thought about a question to ask you after you left about my rhomboid muscles. Not long after my second surgery on my right shoulder, I started experiencing problems with my right rhomboid muscle. As soon as I got back to using my full weights for workouts, the rhomboid would apparently start spasming periodically throughout the day thus applying pressure to the nerve that runs just beneath it and causing slight tingling to pretty severe numbness. It's not painful or anything, just kind of weird. Anyway, my doc gave me Flexeril to calm down the muscle and sent me on my way.

Now, after you did the ART on me this weekend and evaluated my shoulder weakness, I'm wondering if my scapular weakness might have something to with my seized up rhomboid. And, if working on strengthening the scapular muscles like we talked about would help to calm that muscle down without the potent drugs. Any opinions?

Thanks!

[Bill Hartman]

Okay, hang with me here...

What you describe is common with shoulder injuries due to the weakness and muscular substitutions that develop. When one muscle's function declines another usually tries to take over. Nice concept, but it can alter function with resultant pain.

If the infraspinatus is weak (remember the painful muscle on the back of your shoulder blade ) the levator scapula (shrug muscle under the traps) will get tight to take up the slack. This puts the rhomboids on constant tension. The dorsal scapular nerve is under the rhomboids and spinal accessory nerve is between the rhomboids and traps.

The constant tension can irritate the begeezus out of the nerves causing a constant achy feeling back there.

Treating the infraspinatus like we did should help. I wish you'd have mentioned this at the retreat. I'd have done a bit more to keep tension out of the rhomboids.

Strengthening the external rotators and other scapular stabilizers as we talked about should help quite a bit as will the postural correction exercise.

If it recurrs, let me know and we'll approach it another way.

Bill

[Bond007]

Yeah, I wish I'd had remembered about it this weekend as well. The fact is, it hasn't bothered me in a while so I kind of forgot about it. I recognized it was a little achey on the drive home Sunday and that's when the light bulb came on. I'd send you a pic of me kicking myself, but accomplishing that WHILE trying to take a pic is just not possible!

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Thanks again!

Jamie