Whether you are involved in sports, or just spending too much time behind a desk, your shoulders are often the part of the body that take the most toll. In particular, you may often feel stiffness in the subscapularis muscle. Pure Knead Massage therapy (based in AZ and CA) shares this useful information below on why this particular muscle stiffens and how you can relieve tension from the shoulders with a massage at home.
Firstly, what exactly is the Subscapularis?
Your shoulder is the only 365 degree joint in your body. It is controlled by a group of four muscles called the rotator cuff. The most used, largest, and strongest of them is the subscapularis. This muscles is used when pitching, swimming, hitting, and needed with all racquet sports. The subscapularis is a powerful defense to the front of the shoulder joint, preventing the displacement to the head of the humerus.
So, as you can imagine, it is also the most commonly injured muscle in athletes due to its usage. That’s why it’s so important for us to focus on proper stretching after working out and keeping up with your regular at home massage therapy for shoulders, and alignment and posture correction.
Correct Posture to Improve Shoulder Health
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, shoulder issues occur in people with a very active and inactive lifestyle. Exercising will strengthen your muscles but exercising with incorrect posture activates the wrong muscles, like the subscaps. This causes inactivity and weakness of the muscles that should be supporting you. And the strain can be felt after exercising as pain and discomfort in the back, shoulders and around the neck.
Because today’s work environment usually calls for us to spend hours behind a desk, we tend to slump over a computer with our right shoulder lifted as we push a mouse around. Over a prolonged period this can cause us to develop hunch back or “mouse shoulder” (muscle pain and discomfort in the shoulder that we use to move our mouse around). Even sitting here writing this article right now, I feel the need to roll my shoulders in circles and rub my subscaps!
Book a Massage, Take Yoga & Correct Shoulder Health
The cost of physical therapy to correct shoulder issues is not always covered by insurance. But there are other fantastic ways to keep your shoulders healthy and in check!
1. Book a Massage
Finding the right therapist can take time, but once you do, keep up with a regular massage. A therapist who comes to your home is an ideal way to book a regular massage and stick to it . A good massage therapist will assess the problem and advise how to stretch or correct your posture, according to where he/she feels you are holding tension.
2. Yoga
Take up an alignment intensive sport, like yoga, preferably with a private instructor who will correct your posture (in large, group yoga classes, a teacher seldom gives personal attention and corrects posture). As we get older our muscles stiffen and shorten. But yoga teachers and practitioners who have been practicing for a few years, will often say they have grown a few centimeters as they have aged – the exact opposite of what happens in hunch back development! Yoga keeps the muscles long and supple, and the spine healthy.
Book an In Home Massage with a Professional Massage Therapist Today!
