This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're going
over self-administered static release
for the rhomboids, a muscle that has
propensity to get overactive and those
with upper body dysfunction, specifically
those that are exhibiting signs of
excessive downward rotation of the
scapula. I'm going to have my friend, Melissa,
come out. She's going to help me demonstrate
this technique. Now, just a little bit
about the anatomy of the rhomboids. They
originate from C6 and C7 and the
ligamentum nuchae, all the way down to T5,
and then insert into the vertebral
border of the scapula. Now, I think a lot
of individuals have tried to massage
this area out by leaning back over a
foam roll, but because of the way that
your rhomboids are deep to your
trapezius muscles and where on that
vertebral border they insert, the
rhomboid trigger points, which tend to
build up here, right along that vertebral
border, are almost blocked by a foam
roll. Now, the technique I'm about to show
you, I think a lot of individuals have
instinctively tried on their own.
We're going to use a ball. You
guys can use all sorts of different
balls. We have training softballs here
called softies And I love this
trigger point massage ball, this is the
four-inch diameter one, I believe. And
then, of course, my new favorite gadget
here is the the Hypersphere from
Hyperice, and I'll explain why that's so
special in a second.
We're going to use this ball to go
ahead and compress right up against the
vertebral border and the wall just like
so. How does that feel? Okay? Well, good. Now
we need to search for the most tender
spot along that medial border of your
scapula,
so you're going to kind of move around a
little bit. Found it?
Ok. So, we do have to be kind of careful.
As people move around they tend to get in
really bad postures, so I need Melissa to
kind of let this slide down a little bit
so that she can get into a quarter squat
position, have good posture, and still
apply pressure. We don't want to see this:
show that limbo position. Yes, I
see way too much of this position where
people are like this, and this is a
great way to light somebody's low back
up if they have any history of lumbar
pathology. And of course, it's a little
strenuous on the neck, and since there's
so much active in here, I doubt you're
ever going to get a release. So make sure
that you've moved over a spot
that you want to hold and release,
but that you've also adjusted your body
in such a way that you can maintain good
relaxed posture. Now, of course using the
ball applies compression. We can add a
little stretch to this technique to up
receptor activity and hopefully get
autogenic inhibition. And the way we're
going to do that is we're going to go
ahead and cross your arms, but we want to
make sure when we cross the arms that
we're crossing arms so they're like tied in
a knot, so that it takes no muscle activity
to leave the arms crossed. We want to
keep this technique passive and allow
just the weight of the arms themselves
to pull into protraction. So now we have
compression with lengthening, or stretch
caused by the protraction.
How does that feel? A little bit more
intense? Cool.
You ready for step 3? Always. Now if you
have a Hypersphere from Hyperice, we can
stimulate pacinian corpuscles, which are
vibratory receptors. By
turning this puppy on, which vibrates at
28-40 Hertz- that's very, very
fast, that's enough to get a hum
basically going. And I think you guys are
going to see as soon as you apply
vibration with compression and
potentially some stretch that you get
very significant releases very fast. It's
a lot of stimulation, right? So we have
compression, which is probably Golgi
tendon organ and Ruffini endings, we have
our stretch receptors, and
Golgi tendon organ again leading to
autogenic inhibition, and now we have our
pacinian corpuscles being stimulated,
which are going to lead to further inhibition
all from this one little
technique of pinning a Hyperice
between your rhomboid and the wall. Now,
do be careful, guys and notice, this is a
padded wall.
Of course, we're on turf so
everything here is padded just in case
somebody slips, running around. We don't
want anybody getting injured. If you were to do
this on more of a normal wall, like
drywall or brick, it's probably not a bad
idea to put a towel between- go ahead and lean
back- the ball and the wall.
Otherwise, the vibration itself will
leave little little pop marks on the
wall. How does that feel?
Good. Go ahead and move down to the next
spot. Alright. You guys
might have several trigger points within
the rhomboids. Think of how those fibers
are oriented. They're
mostly transverse, but they have a little
bit of a a diagonal this way.
Yeah? It feels pretty good and that's the
lowest setting.
And, you guys can have fun singing
with this vibration sense on, or doing
Darth Vader impressions which we were- "Luke, I am your father"- we were
doing before.
Alright, guys. I'm going to leave you on
that note. This is static
self-administered rhomboid release for
those with upper body dysfunction on an
overhead squat assessment. That would be
somebody who has arms fall or shoulder
girdle elevates. Notice that we put
the arms crossed to increase some stretch,
that she's pinning a ball between
herself and a wall with good posture, and,
of course, we added vibration using the
Hyperice. If you have any questions,
please leave your questions and comments
below in the comments box. I'll talk with
you soon.