What’s up folks? Patrick Lerouge here, from Evolve Restorative Therapy. You can find me at livepainfreeprocess.com.Last week we spoke about carpal tunnel syndrome and I referred to something for which I don’t have a video. I was talking about wrist pain and how carpal tunnel has more issues within the shoulder, yet I did not make a video of the driver inside the shoulder. So today, I am going to mesh the worlds of rotator cuff pain and what I have talked about in the previous week.
What you have to realize with carpal tunnel is that the area in the upper part of the body, is always the bigger driver. So I’m going to show you one of the things I use to break up the functionality between the shoulder and the rotator cuff muscle. This one muscle can shift the way all shoulder muscles work together by rotating your whole scapula along with the glide of the shoulder joint. These muscles need to work in unison, yet the common misconception is that they need to be strong. It’s more about learning how to make them move smoothly and glide in different directions and ranges of motion. You have to break the cycle of fascial binding. If you do that, the body will know what it needs to do and it will do it on its own. So I’m going to show you the easiest muscle to gain access to and the one that affects the entire area. The Infraspinatus is the easiest muscle to reach, which lies directly on top of the triangular scapula bone. This muscle radiates pain right on the bicep head, at the front of the shoulder.
What you want to think about is going from the spine to the shoulder, because that’s how the fiber pattern runs. If you start getting the shoulder to move better, the shoulder will drop and many things will change. Yet there is a reason why this rotator cuff is falling apart and that is what we have to discover.
What I’m going to show you now, is how to work with this area by utilizing the handball. You want to put the handball in the middle of the scapula and slowly allow it to go inside. This muscle has a slow reaction time, because it is so delicate. So don’t rub it all around your scapula trying to get a quick response, because this will elicit a protection response instead. Once you put it in, relax and let the muscle react to you and when this happens, you will start feeling everything that needs to be adjusted.
You are going to put the handball against your back on top of the scapula, lean against the wall, and pull your feet away from your body. As soon as you rotate out, the weight load and angle starts to push on that ball. The ball pushes back and shows you the area you need to work on. Once you do that, lean on it and wait for a little. It will start to refer to where the pain is after three seconds. Then you need to slowly rotate your body to the left and similarly rotate it back to the original position. Then follow the same technique with the ball positioned slightly above, which will touch on many areas at once. Your body is then going to learn how to move in different directions, because you have been focusing on different fiber patterns. Afterwards, perform different arm movements to see what has altered within your shoulder. The more fluid you become, the better you will become at talking with your body. If you guys enjoyed this tip, please share it and I will see you next time.