Great new post from Dr. Dino Pappas on hip hinging

http://thecfim.com/spine-sparing-strategies-hip-hinging

Simple check for neck tension

Tension in the upper shoulder blades and neck is a common problem while exercising. I take a page from the kettlebell folks and teach my patients to “pack” their shoulder girdle and transfer strain from their arms into their rib cage, rather than through the neck.

When you place a load on your arms, there are several pathways that the weight can take from your hands into your body. The optimal pathways is through the serratus anterior, latissimus dorsi and lower trapezius(lower shoulder blade muscles) into your rib cage, which will transfer the load into your legs through your core. If the load moves through the upper trapezius, levator scapulae and rhomboid (the upper shoulder blade muscles) it will first have to move through your neck and head before going through your body into the floor. There will always be some work in the upper shoulder blade muscles, but most of the work should be moving into your rib cage through the lower shoulder blade musculature.

Illustration from Stability, Sport, and Performance Movement by Joanne Elphinston

An easy way to check if you're overstraining your neck while working upper body is to simply turn your head before and then during the exercise. If you can't turn as far or feel a strain or pain, that means that your neck is taking a large amount of the load and we need to redirect that force into the rib cage. The best visualization is the “put your shoulder blade in your opposite back pocket” while doing the exercise and checking the head turns, if you can now go farther or have less strain, the weight is now going straight into your rib cage rather than taking a detour through your neck.

This technique applies to just about any upper body exercise, and ties into a larger concept known as “zipping up”, which will be covered in a future post. Try this check during your workout, starting with lower weight, and see if the chronic neck tension can be instantly modified by packing your shoulder blades into your body.

Oh hello

Welcome to my blog, this is the first day of it, I'll be adding some good things about how to get your body fixed, bike fixed and all around good things about pittsburgh

have a good one

pete