It’s this principle that explains why your body gets stronger after resistance training or more mobile after a yoga session. Wolff stated that tissues adapt based on the stress or demands placed upon them. But it’s important to appreciate Wolff’s law, which is named after a German anatomy scholar who was ahead of his time. There is nothing wrong with being in prolonged flexion, particularly for sitting based activities such as cycling, rowing and kayaking. Let’s start by talking about flexion posture using cycling as an example. It can also affect your breathing, whereby being flexed reduces the amount of expansion possible at your ribs and the ability of the diaphragm to expand efficiently. These changes can commonly cause pain at the neck, shoulders and low back. You’ll notice you can get a lot more range of motion when your body is upright!Ī lack of mobility and strength around the thoracic spine (mid back) and shoulder blades will lead to changes in biomechanics throughout the body. A simple test to understand this relationship is to sit slouched and lift your arms up overhead, then re-test sitting up straight.
THORACIC MOBILITY EXERCISES FULL
This is because biomechanically, thoracic extension is needed to move the shoulder through it’s full overhead range of motion. That is a lot of connections! If we look at the shoulder as an example, having reduced thoracic mobility decreases the range of shoulder movement, as it changes the position of the shoulder blades on the rib cage.
To reinforce the importance of the thoracic spine, this diagram illustrates that it has direct connections to the neck, low back, ribs and shoulder blades. However, the thoracic spine has a substantial degree of rotation movement available.Īnatomy Trains – Thomas W. Flexion and extension movement ranges of the thoracic spine are limited relative to the cervical (neck) and lumbar spine (lower back), largely due to the attachment of the rib cage. The position of the cyclist can be similar to the position you are in when you are sitting at work or bent over looking at your phone.īiomechanically, the thoracic spine (mid back) is biased into flexion, due to the shape of the vertebrae. As you can see in the pictures below, cyclists tend to be in spinal flexion (bent forward), whereas surfers tend to be in spinal extension (back arched). Interestingly, they always seem to be cycling by the coast… maybe I am sensing a link here?! Surfers and cyclists are both exposed to sustained postures at differing extremes for long periods of time. Secondly, I chose cycling, as after recently moving to Melbourne from New Zealand, I see a lot more cyclists on the road. Firstly, I chose surfing because it gets me outside, gets me feeling stronger and gets me in the water. Now this might seem like an unusual pairing of sport to talk about posture with, but let me explain.
The intention of this blog is to educate you about posture, and for the sake of a bit of fun I am going to relate it to surfing and cycling. Sustained Postures and the Importance of the Thoracic Spine March 17th
0 kommentar(er)
