**Transcript**
Hey, Dr. McNamara here, and today I wanted to talk about a problem that we see all the time in our office and it has to do with that rounded shoulders type of posture. You can probably look around if you're in a public place and maybe you'll see some individuals that have that posture, maybe that is even you that has that posture.
Now, the reason why this kind of rounded shoulder posture causes so many problems has to do with our shoulder blade, known as the scapula bone. Now, the scapula has 17 different muscles that attach to it. Some come from the neck, some come from the mid back, some even come from the arms. And when we have that rounded shoulders posture, that's gonna affect the tone of all those muscles.
And if that tone is incorrect, it's gonna increase our symptoms of pain. So how will we fix it? Well, first we wanna make sure we have correct thoracic mobility. Chiropractic adjustments help make sure everything's moving correctly. Then we also really wanna work on what's called the neuromuscular control of that scapula and all the different ranges of motion, upward rotation, retraction, elevation, depression, as well as protraction. So, I'll show you those movements right now.
The movements of the scapula that we are supposed to have complete motor control over are retraction, elevation, protraction, and depression. So this is kind of what we want to be able to do in an open chain. There's also upward rotation. You can see as my arm goes up, my shoulder blade deviates, you can see it on both.
And then the exercise we want to do to get that control is in this position. Then we also want to go the other direction and then we want to throw in that upward rotation and practice the same kind of movement. And that'll really just give you that great neuromuscular control of the shoulder blades.
Eventually you want to get this in a closed chain type of exercise, meaning that the hands are on some sort of surface. And then what you want to be able to do is put a little pressure on it and still have that good neuromuscular control and be able to go in both directions of the body. This is actually surprisingly difficult.
So that is how you gain neuromuscular control of the scapula. We can help you do that here in our office. We can make sure everything's moving correctly, get you adjusted, and get you on the right program to make sure you're feeling right and you have that great posture so you're able to do those things you love.
Thank you.