What we’re going to do today is talk about a different spin, a different look, at bicep tendonitis. We’re going to do this in two parts. The first part I’m going to talk about a different way of looking at it, a different way to thinking outside the box I’d say, for bicep tendonitis as well as the next one, is how to take care of it through the world of trigger point work. So we’ll do this in two steps.

What I want you to understand about bicep tendonitis is its just information of overused, overtaxed, or a malfunctioning bicep muscle which has two heads to it. Let’s take a look at that

All right. The bicep muscle itself has two heads, the long head and the short head. What you have to understand about this bicep muscle is it flexes at the elbow, it helps the elbow flex – which means close – as well as it helps work with shoulder range of motion in the forward view. So it bends, it holds things up in front of you, et cetera, et cetera. What I noticed is I see a lot of easier cases of bicep tendonitis when the head of the shoulder gets inflamed because it’s overused and it no longer fits in the Lamina groove. What I want you to do is touch the front part of your shoulder and if you rub back and forth you’re going to feel a bump. Sometimes you might feel a pop or something move, that’s this bicep tendon at the top of the shoulder popping in and out of the groove. Sometimes, also people lift up their arms and they hear a pop or a click, that’s this muscle popping in or out of this groove. That’s the easier out of the two bicep heads to work with. The harder of the two is the short head because short head actually runs underneath the bone and near the shoulder and hits a part of the scapula that pokes out, hits the undertow. What happens is when you work with your arms and you lift your arms up, you actually might – most likely will – roll your shoulder in and it starts to grind inside the joint. Now that makes this whole muscle inflamed and then you have trouble because now your habit loop is actually grinding consistently to make this muscle become inflamed. Every time you pick up your arm it’s actually grinding. We’re working with a deeper habit.

What I want you guys to recognize is the front part of your shoulder is where the bicep runs. What I’m saying about the short head being the hardest out of the two to understand is, when you actually let your arms drop, if you notice that your elbow, the point of your elbow, is pointing in towards your body, that rotates the whole shoulder in and now every time you pick up your arm, you’re grinding that short head inside the joint capsule and it’s just rubbing consistently. Those are the two reasons why your body reacts in the way that it does for you. In short we always figure out why your body’s reacting and what role we play in causing that reaction.

A different view everyone talks about you just overuse the muscles, it’s inflamed, you get cortisone shots, et cetera, et cetera. What I want you to notice is the role you might be playing is, as a different vantage point is, if your body’s not stable it’s going to use a lot of muscle tissue to do something. I call this concept, killing an ant with a sledge hammer with all your might. It’s just doing way too much work and you don’t even have to do it. You can just kill the ant just like that with no muscle tissue whatsoever.

What happens is I notice a lot of people that have this issue, either flaring up or present and they’re not even worrying about, they’re the people that do a lot of things and have the mentality that things need to be hard, or they don’t have a structured core itself so they do a lot of things out in front of them with a long reach, a long grasp. When I went to massage therapy school, I had to learn how to keep my core underneath me. Every move I made, came from the core, came from my belly. So I always learned to keep things tight and close, and close-knit, so every time I would move, my whole body moved. You have to realize that. If you’re out and about, and you’re doing things in this outside range, you’re going to also generate a lot of tension in your biceps. Because now your bicep has to work really, really hard.

I want you to start recognizing this in a two-fold way. One, if you go pick up a coffee mug, touch base with your bicep and see how hard you’re working. It doesn’t have to work hard to pick up a cup and then you just have to ratchet down how much energy you use to grab that coffee mug. But this is the bigger one, the bigger one. What happens if your mindset is, “I have to work hard?” What happens if you consistently see yourself doing those things? Then, you have to realize is what’s not stable in your outside world that’s forcing you to work hard, which then brings you into your mental aspect that you’re not planning, you’re not seeing things clear-eyed enough so you’re not getting yourself underneath yourself to work easier. Plan things out. You always have to muscle through things. Things always have to be hard because that’s the way it’s always been, but it doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to always consistently be grabbing them and really forcibly doing things, it’s just a matter of you learning how to plan things out. See things the way you don’t do so you can do things with the least amount of effort. That’s the name of the game. That’s what I want you to focus on.

Next week what we’re going to talk about actually how to clean it up in the world of trigger point because that’s a different aspect, and you’re going to see that it’s never right where it is. Right where you’re getting your pain. Okay folks, until next week. Bye.