(Mid Back and Neck Pain Continued)

you are not familiar with isometric exercises, they basically consist of contracting your muscles without changing the joint angle or muscle length at all. Usually that’s done by pushing up against an immovable structure of some sort. Tim was doing these exercises twice a day and the only result he got was irritation.

Tim said he was so tired of going through this and not having any answers was affecting his work and his family life. One of Tim’s biggest concerns was him not being able to throw a baseball to his son because his neck pain would get worse. I have heard and seen these types of stories before. In my work I don’t just see how much physical pain my clients are in, but I also see the emotional strain it puts on their lives. The great thing about working with my clients is that I not only get to help them out of pain, but I am also privileged to watch them make progress and return to the activities they used to do. So after hearing Tim’s story I was really eager to get to work.

When I evaluated Tim I found that, when comparing it to his left shoulder, his right shoulder was dropped down about three-quarters of an inch (¾”). I also noted winging of the scapula on his right shoulder which basically means that the blade was pulled off his rib cage. This was a huge finding for me because it explained why he was not getting better. When I explained to Tim how because of these deviations, the muscles on the right side of his neck and upper back were not the same length tension as the muscles on his left side, he was blown away. It made perfect sense to him that if muscles have two attachment points then his right shoulder being three-quarters (¾”) lower than his left would affect all of his muscles in that area.