By Mary Pezzella, PT, DPT You finish a long rehearsal and your neck is tight, your shoulder is burning, and the space between your shoulder blades feels like a knot. Maybe it settles overnight. Then you pick up your instrument the next day and it’s right back. If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company....
Low back pain is one of the most common reasons why people visit a Physical Therapist. At our Boulder and Lafayette Physical Therapy clinics, we effectively treat this condition with education, spinal manipulation, and exercise. This latter intervention has the greatest long-term effect on both existing symptoms and reducing the risk of recurrence. In the...
How many times have you seen someone whose posture looks like this while belaying? Neck pain is a common in rock climbers. Although climbing itself can lead to neck pain, the most common cause is spending prolonged periods belaying. We refer to this as “belayer’s neck”. Belayer’s neck is a colloquial term to describe a...
Shoulder pain is the 2nd most common orthopedic reason patients seek out medical care behind low back pain. Shoulder pain has many causes including lack of mobility, shoulder blade and rotator cuff weakness, but posture is often criticized as a risk factor for shoulder pain. Clinicians and patients believe a poor posture places structures such...
Posture has a controversial and complex role in musculoskeletal pain. Some research studies have found zero to weak correlations between posture and pain while other studies have shown it can both impact pain and function. One area of the body where posture may have a larger role is with shoulder function. Individuals with limited mid...
Our current understanding of posture has changed dramatically over the past 20 years due to the influx of scientific literature on posture and muscle and joint pain. Previously, posture was thought to be strongly associated with muscles imbalances including tightness or weakness. For example, forward shoulders were thought to be associated with shortened pectoral muscles....
The pectoralis minor muscle is situated on the front of the chest and attaches the scapula to the rib cage. When this muscle becomes chronically tight it can pull the scapula anteriorly, creating a posture where the shoulders are rounded forward. This posture is often seen in rock climbers and tightness of the pec minor...
After hearing a patient’s history, Physical Therapists decide on known tests and measures to assess for impairments such as a loss of joint range of motion or muscle weakness which either precipitated or perpetuated a patient’s symptoms or injury. The foot and ankle are commonly assessed as a contributing factor to lower quarter injuries and...
Leaking during jumping jacks or other high-impact exercise is common, but it’s not something more Kegels will fix. If you’re doing pelvic floor work and still leaking with jumping, the problem usually isn’t strength, it’s timing. Having leakage with jumping and running, whether newly postpartum, decades postpartum, or having never had a baby, has multiple...
By: Rani Helvey-Byers, PT, DPT, OCS As climbers, we like to torture our shoulders by placing them in extreme positions and then asking them to generate an immense amount of force in said positions. Because of this, we can’t just train our shoulders in one plane. If we want resilient shoulders, we need to at...
