muscle – Wellness Focus

Tight Trapezius muscle?

You might not know exactly where it is, but you most likely have experienced pain and strain in your Trapezius muscle. Maybe you just started working out. Maybe you swim or play tennis. Perhaps you are carrying heavy objects or been sit in one position for a long period of time. Maybe you’re just stressed. All these activities can cause your traps to tighten.

The Trapezius has three areas: upper, middle and lower. The muscle stretches from the top of your neck, out to your shoulders and a little more than half way down the center of your back.

This huge muscle performs many different functions, including moving shoulder blades in toward the spine, rotating and moving shoulder blades up and down, bringing the head and neck backward, and rotating and side bending the neck. It also assists in breathing, opening up the small amount of breathing room in the upper chest area.

For people who work at desks and computers, Continue reading “Tight Trapezius muscle?”

Isotonic vs Isometric, Huh?

Look at your upper arms as you flex (bend your arm at the elbow). You’ll see the top-of-the-arm muscle push up the skin (or “bulge” for those with python upper arms). What you’re observing is the contraction of your bicep. Contractions are the action that happened when muscles shorten. Lengthen or shortening of muscles are involved in most every movement we make.

In the case of contractions, there are two major types: isotonic and isometric. And you can tell the difference by what happens to the length of the muscle (shorten, lengthen, or no change).

Continue reading “Isotonic vs Isometric, Huh?”

Sore SCM?

Sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle

Everybody has two of them and they’re very often the storage point for stress and strain. Say hello to your Sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscles. The muscles are attached to the base of your skull just behind your ear and extend down your neck and toward the front of your body and attach to the clavicle (collar bone).

What does the muscle do?

The muscle is responsible for rotating and flexing your neck. The SCM also helps you breath in (inspiration). Interestingly, while the muscle seems to store stress, it rarely hurts. Instead it just causes strain on other muscles and tension can present itself in the form of headaches, facial pain, jaw tension and even dizziness, blurry vision and muffled hearing.

Continue reading “Sore SCM?”

Levator Scapula: The Shrug Muscles

The levator scapula muscles are muscles in your neck, one on each side, that run between the upper part of each shoulder blades (scapula) and join with the spine at the top four cervical vertebrae. It is a thin, flat muscle located just below the upper part of the trapezius.

The elevator scapula muscle elevates the scapula when you lift your arms, or shrug your shoulders. It also assists many other muscles in your neck and shoulders with rotation of the scapula and steering your glenohumeral joint.

The muscle is commonly overly used as a result of asymmetrical carrying, lifting or reaching with your arm. Things like carrying a bag or backpack on one shoulder, holding your phone between your head and shoulder, or using a computer mouse can all cause stress on the levator scapulae muscles.

How do I know my levators are stressed? Continue reading “Levator Scapula: The Shrug Muscles”

Sore Biceps?

Your biceps (biceps brachii) are one of the most used muscles in your body. The muscles are also the target of many fitness training programs. It’s no wonder that overuse, strain, or trauma in these muscles is common.

Where’s the bicep?

Your biceps are muscles on the front part of your upper arm, extending between your elbow and shoulder. They have a “short head” and “long head”, meaning the muscle itself has two parts that work together as a single muscle. The biceps attach to your shoulder joint in two places and the other end of the bicep connects to your forearm bones (radius and ulna). Biceps flex your forearms at the elbow and also assist with twisting the forearm (supination).

Common conditions

The biceps can ache for many reasons, the most common is overuse. That’s when you attempt to lift something that’s too much for the muscle, or you do too many reps on your curls, or overdo the pull ups. In some cases, the over stretching can cause micro tears in muscle fibers or related tendons and cause a strain. Pain and swelling typically come with a strain.

Continue reading “Sore Biceps?”

The Perfect Piriformis

The piriformis is a busy muscle. It is involved in almost every motion of the hips and legs.

The piriformis muscle is a flat, band-like muscle located in the buttocks near the top of the hip joint. This muscle is important in lower body movement because it stabilizes the hip joint and lifts and rotates the thigh away from the body. The piriformis enables us to walk, shift our weight from one foot to another, and maintain balance. It is also used in sports that involve lifting and rotating the thighs.

Specifically, the piriformis muscle is part of the lateral rotators of the hip, along with the quadratus femoris, gemellus inferior, gemellus superior, obturator externus, and obturator internus. The piriformis laterally rotates the femur with hip extension and abducts the femur with hip flexion. Abduction of the flexed thigh is important in the action of walking because it shifts the body weight to the opposite side of the foot being lifted, which keeps us from falling. The action of the lateral rotators can be understood by crossing your legs to rest an ankle on the knee of the other leg. This causes the femur to rotate and point the knee laterally. The lateral rotators also oppose medial rotation by the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. When the hip is flexed to 90 degrees, piriformis abducts the femur at the hip (Netter’s Clinical Anatomy, 2010)

Continue reading “The Perfect Piriformis”

Massage for Tech Geeks

Most of us proud tech geeks in Silicon Valley don’t let a day pass without using some gadget to keep up with a fast-paced world. While our hyper-connectedness can be exciting, it also challenges our body and mind to continue operating at a dizzying pace.

Just like most of our technology, our uber-connected body technology runs 24/7 and occassionally needs a reboot.

Like any computer hardware, occasionally our brain, and our muscles, need to be powered down so that they can reset and function optimally.

Continue reading “Massage for Tech Geeks”

Trigger Point Therapy

If you’ve got a headache, it could be coming from your shoulders.

Muscles make up, on average, between 36-42% of your body weight. With that much mass, they have a significant impact on your health. When all is in working order, muscles allow you to perform normal activities with ease. When your muscles experience trigger points (also known as “muscle knots”), you can experience pain, stiffness, tension, a loss in your range of motion and sometimes severe limitations of your normal function.

Trigger points are an extremely common cause of pain. There are more than 600 potential trigger points possible in human muscles. Light pressure to active trigger points reproduces the pain and gives the therapist a clue as to where to look for the cause. Trigger points have a special property called referred pain. Referred pain means that a trigger point in one muscle can actually create pain in another area.

Continue reading “Trigger Point Therapy”

All About Hamstrings

Hamstring soreness or muscle injuries (aka “pulled hamstring”) are both common and painful. A pulled hamstring or strain is an injury to one or more of the muscles at the back of the thigh. The muscle name “hamstring” is descriptive, with “ham-” referring to the fat and muscle behind the knee. “String” refers to supporting tendons–all located on either side of the back of the knee. Your hamstrings are actually three muscles in your posterior thigh (semitendinosus, semimembranosus, biceps femoris). Those muscles flex (bend) the knee and extend (straighten) the hip.

Continue reading “All About Hamstrings”

The Mighty Trapezius Muscle

You might not know exactly where it is, but you most likely have experienced pain and strain in your Trapezius muscle. The Trapezius has three areas: upper, middle and lower. The muscle stretches from the top of your neck, out to your shoulders and a little more than half way down the center of your back.

For people who work at desks and computers, Continue reading “The Mighty Trapezius Muscle”