Your pecs are an extremely important muscle to address when treating neck and shoulder pain and even pins and needles in your hands.
Your Pectoralis Muscle Group consists of two muscles:
- Pectoralis Major (Pec Major) and Pectoralis Minor (Pec Min)
These muscles help move your arm, elevate your ribs in deep breath, downwardly rotate your shoulder blade and pull your shoulder forward.
In order for these muscles to do this they need to attach onto your rib cage and breast bone, your shoulder blade as well as the top part of your upper arm bone, known as your humerus.
Due to where both muscles attach, as well as the movement they create a few things can occur:
- If tight they can pull your shoulder forward contributing to poor posture and shoulder blade position.
- When these muscles are associated with pulling your shoulders forward this causes other muscles to become stretched and long to compensate. This causes muscles like your traps and rhomboids to become painful and sore.
- The veins, nerves and arteries from your neck have to travel beneath your pec minor to get to your arm. If this muscles is too tight it can impact these essential structures causing pain, pins and needles and muscle weakness including changes to grip strength.
- With changes to your posture caused by shoulder being pulled forward you get changes in the way your humerus (upper arm bone) moves within the joint. Over time this can lead to injuries like bursitis and tendinopathies is the soft tissue structures associated with your shoulders.
These are reason's why when you come in for neck and shoulder pain or tightness we will assess and treat your pec muscles.
What We Do in a Remedial Massage or Myotherapy Session:
When you experience pain ad tightness we generally assess the areas of your body above and below your complaint.
What this means for the shoulder is we assess your neck, your thoracic spine and rib area (chest and upper back), your shoulders and sometimes your elbow and the nerves associated with your neck and shoulder areas.
We are looking for (to name a few):
- General posture and where your neck and shoulders are sitting in relation to the rest of your body.
- Any asymmetries between one side and the other
- Reproduction of your pain and/or tightness
- Joint movement including the range, quality of movement and the end feel of joints.
- Changes in muscle tone, palpable nodules known as myofascial trigger points and muscle strength
- Neurological symptoms like muscle weakness, pins and needles or pain associated with nerve pathways.
- After we have assessed you and determined that we need to treat your pec muscles we can treat them in a number of ways.
How Do We Treat Your Pecs?
- Deep Tissue Massage and Trigger Point Therapy, through the front of your chest directly onto of your pec muscles.
- Treatment Directly on Pec Minor involves sliding our hand underneath your pec major, near your armpit and applying pressure directly on this muscle. It can be quite painful but is very effective if your shoulders are pulled forward or you are experiencing neurological symptoms down your arm associated with a condition called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.
- Pin and Stretch - We can hold your pec major muscle in a 'pincer' like grip or a firm pressure over the muscle. We then move your arm through its range to stretch out the tissue underneath our fingers and release tightness in the muscle.
- Myofascial Release is a technique that works on the fascia around the muscles. This can be applied to your pecs.
- Dry Needling is a technique where very fine needles are inserted into your muscle. Therapists at No More Knots perform this technique, once they have had additional training (See our therapist pages to learn who performs dry needling). It can be a quick and effective way to release your pecs, with minimal pain.
- Assisted Stretching and Home Care - Stretching and Triggering of your pec muscles is something we will often recommend or help you perform. It can take a while for these muscles to loosen off and to make lasting changes to your posture. It is why when we massage or treat your pecs in clinic we will often recommend mobility exercises for at home.
What tightness them up?
More often than not anytime you use your arms, you will be using your pec muscles. This is why they often get tight.
When you sit for long periods of time with poor upper body posture these muscles can shorten, contributing to the problem.
Almost every sport uses your pecs because that play such a vital role in shoulder movement. Gym including bench press and push ups, throwing sports, swimming, cycling, rowing, running - any sport where your arms are involved, your pecs will be working!
You can understand why it is so important to loosen them off!!
What is Next?
Your Pectoralis Muscle group plays vital role in helping to move your arm, breath and in shoulder blade movement.
If you are experiencing neck and/ or shoulder pain or tightness it is worth getting one of our remedial massage therapists or myotherapists to assess and treat your neck and shoulders.
To book in with one of our friendly and experienced team head to our online bookings page or call us directly at our Greenslopes, Taringa or Newmarket clinics.
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