Weekly Health Talk with Dr. P: Posture

Posture makes a difference! Watch Dr. Parson in the video below to learn the key factors to a perfect posture.

Good morning all. So, I want to address shoulder issues today. Um, shoulder issues can come in all kinds: rotator cuff, tendinopathy, tendonitis, uh labrum, ac joint, you name it those are the most common ones, rarely arthritis of the shoulder you'd be surprised that's it's not and when it goes down it's gone down there's it's hard to do anything with. But um but those are most of them soft tissue related biomechanics get screwed but everybody “I hurt here” but that ain't where it actually came from. You ultimately put strain on your rotator cuff and we'll stick with that now or your labrum. And a lot of this you predispose the postural and I'm going to show you a few things that lend you to  a high probability of hurting your shoulder or your shoulders already hurt and then you're going to look in the mirror and say “I see what he's talking about”. Point is, posture makes a difference um and then let's lay the groundwork for this. So, you can go look in the mirror and can you see the back of your hands all right that already means that your shoulders rotate what we call internally and already binding up the tendon, that's already happened that's happening on a daily basis. So, ideally posture should be with the thumb thumbs pointing forward and I'm kind of squeezing my back muscles a little bit right now, I'm not doing this I'm just squeezing my shoulder blades right. The more I squeeze them the more this happens. Posture, you know it, you see it. Range of motion is decreased when you do this, hands are rotated forward, traps are engaged constantly 24 hours sitting in a desk oh this this, whatever you're doing. Construction, here. So, our back very rarely gets any treatment unless it starts failing and you go see somebody but it's a cumulative thing that makes you very susceptible to rotator cuff problems. So, your  posture is where all the rehab is and all exercises are based on getting not necessarily just working the tendon. And there are thousands of exercises, thousands of exercises you can look those up and all of them have the same concept but the paradigm of getting a shoulder truly better is we gotta get the cause all right. And so, the cause is the we're constantly using these traps which lift and if you ever had had a rotate cuff problem that's all you do you lift with your traps because you these don't work. So point is is um I'll show you a simple one called brueger's. I give this a lot but it's the concept because all the exercises are based off of this or the concept of or something like It. And so, we just put your hands behind your back, all right. You can grab your finger or you can put them together and grab clasp them like so if you can't. So, these are just daily exercises that are to be done, they're easy, you don't do them long but they engage your back muscles. So, I'm squeezing my glutes heard that concept before. All right, shrug, shrug, shrug, squeeze pencil between your shoulder blades, push down that's a key element, push down. If you can't do that, bring your hands out. So, let's do that again. Thumbs face forward, hands out, shrug, squeeze, squeeze your butt, push down, reach for the floor, reach, reach, you can just feel some muscle engaging you haven't touched a long time. Those are truly the shoulder muscles. Those muscles engage and get you back. You cannot sit there all day and just keep trying to work on your posture, that's impossible you've got to engage the muscles and start the process. So, this is brueger's exercise let's do it again. Shrug, squeeze, push down, grab your hands, whatever you're gonna do, push down, squeeze your butt, squeeze, hold 15 seconds. Oh, that's not a lot to ask. Do that when you're sitting, take your breaks every hour or so get out and do it and if you want more exercises there are plenty of them out there we can go into the thousands but they're all based on squeezing the shoulder blade doing whatever but they're all based off of the concept that I just told you. First, it's going to the  gym seated rows please quit shrugging. Here's another I got to touch on this. So, you guys go to the gym drives me crazy seeing you in there because you're fit and all this, or old or whatever and uh and I see a problem that everybody, I say everybody, most everybody's doing it drives me nuts. Um and I tell a lot of patients this and they get it once they start. So, let's do a seated row. Oh, okay so if I stop you there all you're doing is shrugging and working a muscle that you work about 24 hours a day sitting at the office or shrug, shrug, shrug. Get your elbows down, squeeze. Just saw that before, no shoulder, no traps. Here, all right so with that said you do it when you go pull your lats down, when you do your lat pull downs...what are we doing. Watch it, just watch it, you'll become aware of this when you do this at the gym. And rows, shrug, shrug, shrug...all we do. Do the exercise without shrugging, it will engage the muscles you're trying to work. Everything from, you name it. Every kind of exercising, lateral rolls whatever, shrug, shrug, shrug, shrug. Get the traps out, play. We gotta have this, we need this back here middle of the scapula working, that's the concept. If you engage that concept your workouts will be better and your posture will be better and your shoulder the possibility of you getting injured goes down all right, have a good day.