Welcome to this months' brief discussion of Pectoralis muscles.
The pec muscles are important to chest flexion and can cause a lot of undue issues in the back (along with other muscles... but, like the psoas muscle, usually its these guys).
The pectoralis major muscle attaches along the sternum, collar bone, and twists towards its insertion of the upper arm. This guy can handle a lot of load, likes to be strong and likes to be tight.
Pectoralis minor attaches to ribs 3-5 and moves the the front of the shoulder blade. This guy helps more with shoulder blade movement in conjunction to helping with rib movement while breathing.
When tight, these guys pull the arms and shoulders forward. against the upper back muscles, they are far more superior, and will win most of the time. Poor posture (easy in any occupation where our arms come forward including desk work, massage therapy, even electrical - but more with arms above head opposed to forward), poor sleeping habits (sleeping with arm under head, or over head), and stress (when in stress state, the body likes to naturally curl into the fetal position) can cause this problem to increase.
Why care? Well usually when the upper back is in pain. And it's definitely the squeaking wheel, these guys are a major contributor to the problem. Also the brachial plexus - a large nerve branch, comes into the arm under these guys. If they're tight, there is a chance they can cause numbness down the arm as well.
What should you do?
First thing is STRETCH. Remember from our last blog about Psoas, a stretch should be a little uncomfortable BUT NEVER PAINFUL. If it's causing pain, there is usually alternate ways to stretch the muscle.
One of the easiest stretches is to roll a long bath towel up, place it along the length of your spine, and lay on the towel with your arms stretched out about 90 degrees from your body. This is usually a gentle and easy stretch (also lazy which I always support) to allow some opening in the chest.
Another easy stretch for pecs is in a doorframe. You can stand with elbows bent and arms about 90 - each on either side of the doorframe and step through until you feel the stretch. If you feel pain in the shoulder, readjust sometimes it's stepping too far forward, or allowing your shoulder to bend too much. you should feel the stretch in the chest, not a pain around the shoulder joint.
***Stretches should be held for AT LEAST 30 seconds and ideally done 1+ times a day. For both stretches it is encouraged to do different angles of your arms other than 90 degrees to promote stretching all facets of the muscle.***
Ideally once you moved through really opening up the pecs, you would move into strengthening the upper back muscles. It's not advised first because it can cause compression issues and injuries as two theoretically tight muscles are competing for dominance. At least that is my trained two cents.
Included below is a really good pec minor stretch, and some more pec major stretches (with some more education as to what they do) that we recommend including into your homecare.
image sourced through standard license via Shutterstock