We're kicking off Thursday with a little functional anatomy for you this week. I've heard "I know I should keep my shoulders down and back" a few times in the last week, so I thought I would clarify!

The TLDR* is highlighted below (*too long didn't read).

The rhomboid muscle is highlighted in blue below. It is often the centre of attention from therapists and desk workers who claim they "know they need to keep their shoulders down and back more" to help with their posture and neck pain. It has similar synnergists (muscles with similar jobs) more superficial to it, but I removed them in the image below to narrow our focus. Here's why that might not be totally true.

The rhomboid muscles have key points of attachment that include the rhomboid minor connecting from the cervical vertebrae C7 to T1, and the rhomboid major spanning from T2 to T5. Both muscles anchor to the scapula, specifically at the inferior aspect of the medial border:

In terms of actions, the rhomboids are primarily responsible for scapular DOWNWARD rotation (contraction on the right rhomboid causes a clockwise spin of the scapula, while on the left side, it results in a counterclockwise spin) and scapular RETRACTION (pulling the shoulder blades back and together). However, there's a common tendency to overuse the "down and back" cue, which can lead to excessive strain and improper movement patterns.

When the rhomboids become too tight or remain in a contracted state, it can lead to a lower shoulder posture, like what you see in these images below. Funny enough these are similar postures some people get themselves into when working at a computer all day:

While you *might* indeed have weak rhomboids, just driving them into one static posture (down and back) instead of another static posture (up and forward) probably won't fix the problem. According to the work by Gisela Sjøgaard, keeping a muscle in a static position for too long increases the load on the muscle and can be a culprit for the neck pain and shoulder pain we feel.

What seems to work better than just picking a new static posture to hold (which is my beef about people just saying that "Shoulders Down and Back" is best), all the muscles and stabilizers in the area should be regularly strength trained through a full range of motion, which will allow the muscle to travel in short AND long positions, settling at rest in a more neutral position.
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​HERE'S AN EXERCISE (from Shoulder Foundations, too) that you can use to start strengthening the rhomboid.

And HERE's a full blog post I previously wrote on the topic.

Interested in reading more research on the topic? I pulled some info for today's email from these: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

With the recent release of Shoulder Foundations, you can start self-assessing these things too, for less than the cost of one appointment with us! Let me know your thoughts - I reply 100% of the time.
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Yours in physiology,

Carla