Blog What is Muscle Balance - Amy Riddick Physiotherapy

Sloped Shoulders and Shrugs

7/11/2024

Did you know that sloped shoulders are a sign of muscle weakness? Due to the weight of the arms and gravity over the years, the upper fibres of trapezius muscle become so long that they can no longer do their job (which is to raise your shoulder blades when your arms are above shoulder height). Mine were weak by the age of only fifteen, and ached daily. I did some exercises that I THOUGHT we good for me, including shrugs with weights and stretching my head to one side then the other.
Did you know that strengthening the upper fibres of trapezius properly can potentially improve the health of FORTY spinal joints and both shoulders? There are forty joints between the occiput and T12 which can become compressed from the upper fibrest of trapezius being too long and the lower fibres of trapezius being too short. The lower fibres hold the shoulder blades down, preventing them from gliding up as they should when the arms are above shoulder height, which can cause rotator cuff and bicep tendon tendonitis.
Did you know that doing shrugs with your arms at your sides can make things WORSE? And so can stretching your head to the side? Come in to learn how to strengthen your upper fibres of trapezius properly and how to correct your shoulder blade posture - it is not by pulling your shoulders back or down.

Amy Riddick Physiotherapy, where mechanical injuries get mechanical treatment.

Do You Enjoy Exercising? Did You KNOW....?

7/4/2024

Did you know that too much mobility leads to instability? If you are overly flexible, joints become unstable. Just like many things in life, balance is key - there is an optimal amount of flexibility, which should not be surpassed. See Amy for an assessment and tune-up of your deep stabilizing muscles and to learn which stretches YOU should avoid.
Did you know that when you ‘feel the burn while working out’, this is a signal that your muscle is not getting oxygen? Prolonging the burn would be like hitting the gas pedal in a vehicle when the gas tank is empty.
Did you know that doing Kegel’s indefinitely can lead to urgency, frequency, and pain? The symptoms of a weak pelvic floor and a tight pelvic floor are the same. That's right, you can experience urgency and have to go frequently whether your pelvic floor muscles are too tight OR too loose. Incontinence may be common but it is not normal -- your muscles used to have the right amount of tone, they often just need a little tune-up later in life. Amy has been helping people with incontinence for over 20 years, with non-invasive testing and treatment (male and female).

Amy Riddick Physiotherapy, where mechanical injuries get mechanical treatment.

Why Should we Avoid Eccentric Stretching?

5/24/2024

Have you ever done the calf stretch on a step and felt how intense it is? Or the chest stretch in a doorway or in a corner?
When your body weight is behind/on top of the stretch, your muscles actually contract to prevent themselves from tearing. This is why it feels so intense. This is known as eccentric stretching, which should be avoided. For a muscle to lengthen, it has to be relaxed. Instead of trying to stretch your calf on a step, stretching on flat ground with hands on a wall to balance you wil allow your muscle to relax and lengthen (below).

Avoid pectoralis major corner or doorway chest stretches (pictured above, right). Instead, come in for a few sessions to learn how to use your lower fibres of serratus anterior (LFSA) and stretch pectoralis minor into proper alignment while doing other things all day. With stronger LFSA comes a stronger-looking physique/ square shoulders, and less rotator cuff and long head of biceps impingement.

How to Warm Up for Your Sport

5/9/2024

‘Keep your muscles warm so they perform’

Soft tissues are more willing to stretch when they are warm. Before your game, doing a five-minute jog followed by the actual activity slower than game speed and in good alignment (more of a ‘dynamic stretch’, going through your full ROM) will ensure that your muscles are warm and less likely to tear. You will get the best return on your investment when you do sustained stretches throughout your game and afterwards, assuming you are keeping your muscles warm enough.

Also, watching your alignment while sitting and AFTER the game can reduce your chance of injury. Warm ligaments and spinal discs are more likely to stretch beyond normal, which is not good. Sitting slouched or taking a bath instead of a shower afterwards may cause MORE damage to your back than the sport. Back injuries are not necessarily from overexertion during the game, but from the accumulation of poor alignment while warm. Standing, walking and lying down are better for your back than sitting, especially during and after sports.

For less chance of neck and shoulder pain, come in for an assessment of your muscle balance and to learn how to position your shoulder blades. It is NOT squeezing them together or back and down - I learned from painful experience. Now that I do it the right way, my shoulders are square again, I look much stronger than I used to and the pain is gone.
For less chance of low back pain, see me for a thorough assessment of your sciatic nerve tension and all four of your core muscles - it's more than transversus abdominis.

Amy Riddick Physiotherapy, where mechanical injuries get mechanical treatment.

Exercises That are Pretty Safe

5/1/2024

Two of the exercises above are least likely to add to the common muscle imbalance in the leg. Read the article and/or see the bottom for the answers.

Exercises that are pretty safe to do, with respect to muscle balance: Free weights are best for two reasons: 1) you can correct your alignment (you don’t have to sacrifice your alignment to fit yourself into a machine) and 2) in real life, objects are not conveniently placed on a track for us. With free weights, you can develop functional strength AND work your stabilizers by correcting alignment.
Arms:

skull crusher, tricep pulleys - if you want bulkier arms, work your triceps!
bicep curls with dumbbells or preacher bar - do not use preacher/bicep TABLE - it takes shoulders out of good alignment
straight-arm pull-downs to work your triceps and core (multi-task!)

Legs:

leg press is the only machine I recommend, using gluteus medius to stabilize/ align knees properly - come in to learn how!
squats, lunges and box jumping only if you can control your alignment with gluteus medius

Cardio:

anything you enjoy such as bike, elliptical or treadmill in good alignment while using transversus abdominis to stabilize - come in to learn how, it is different from bracing for a punch with your rectus abdominis and way more beneficial

If you cannot squat all the way down without weight, we can work together towards a deeper squat. One minute of deep squatting per day is a great strategy to learn when you are young, to maintain healthy knees and hips into old age. And if you are older, it’s never too late to improve. Raising the toilet seat will not make your knees and hips healthier and it makes bowel movements less efficient.

answers: A and D because the gluteus medius can only stabilize the leg when the foot is planted

Amy Riddick Physiotherapy, where mechanical injuries get mechanical treatment.

Why is Alignment Important?

4/25/2024

If your car was pulling to one side, you would take it to your mechanic to fix the alignment, right?
Alignment of your bones is important if you want to look and feel strong and for your fast-twitch muscles (which is most of your muscles) to perform well and not get pinched.
How do we align our bones? Start with axial extension: imagine a string that pulls the top of the back of your head straight up to the sky to pull your head back slightly and lengthen your spine. Then come in to learn how to align your shoulder blades and your lower back with your slow-twitch stability muscles. They are both a process, usually taking at least two visits and practising at home to master. If you are having any knee or hip pain, Amy can assess your stabilizing muscle in your hip.

Amy Riddick Physiotherapy, where mechanical injuries get mechanical treatment.

Stay tuned for muscles that are safe to strengthen without adding to muscle imbalances.

Do You Exercise Regularly?

4/19/2024

Do you exercise regularly? You can Google how to stretch or strengthen muscles…. But how useful are exercises if they are adding to your muscle imbalances or moving a hypermobile joint? With too much mobility, you lose stability. And what if you are stretching a muscle that is already longer than its optimal length? Well, it LOSES strength.
I started working out when I was 11 years old because my big brother asked me to spot for him. I had no idea what that meant, but I was all in! We gathered lots of info from magazines on how to strengthen our muscles. We worked out hard to fast, loud music. By the age of 15, I was in great shape! But, my neck muscles ACHED every day, especially if I wore a heavy jacket. I went on to University to learn even more exercises and earn my Bachelor of Science in PT. I corrected my forward head posture, but the ache persisted.
After I graduated, I stumbled upon a course on muscle balance. I learned my favourite exercise ever and also re-connected to my deepest shoulder blade muscles. Five days later, my neck pain was gone! I slashed and burned some of my regular exercises that I had thought were good for me (shrugs with arms at sides, rotator cuff strengthening with resistance band) and stopped pulling my shoulder blades back and down. Are YOU doing some things that are contributing to your aches and pains?
Book today for one-on-one assessment and treatment.
Online booking, free parking, direct billing to most insurance companies.
Amy Riddick Physiotherapy, where mechanical injuries get mechanical treatment.

Other exercises that can add to muscle imbalances: sidelying leg raise/abduction, seated knee extension, improper bridging, Kegel's, stretching the head forward or to the side, pulling the shoulder blades back or back and down

Stay tuned for a list of exercises that are least likely to add to muscle imbalances.

What is Muscle Balance and Why is it Important?

4/12/2024

What is muscle balance?
'Muscle imbalances tend to occur in pairs. One muscle becomes short and dominant while the opposing muscle becomes too long and weak. For example, the upper fibres of trapezius muscle and lower fibres of trapezius muscle. The upper fibres of trapezius become too long simply because of the weight of the arms and gravity over time, carrying heavy objects in the hand or on the shoulder, and/or whiplash. And the lower fibres of trapezius become too short and dominate over the upper fibres of trapezius. What happened first? That may be a chicken and egg question!
There is often also an imbalance between pectoralis minor and the lower fibres of serratus anterior. Strengthening these fibres is complicated but so worth it. I got rid of my supraspinatus tendonitis in less than a week, just by strengthening it throughout my daily activities. This confirmed the value in it, so I am pleased to share it in my Neck and Shoulder course' (as well as with my patients).
Why is Muscle Balance Important?
The sole purpose of a joint between two bones is to move. If muscles are not balanced, this can ruin bony alignment and reduce joint motion. For example, the upper fibres of trapezius (UFT) and lower fibres of trapezius (LFT)(pictured below, right) span from the base of the head down to T12. This means that when they are not balanced, they can compress 40 facet joints, reducing motion at potentially all of those joints! And, the upper fibres of trapezius can ache from being longer than it should be.
There are also muscles in the core and in the leg that should be balanced. Book an appointment with Amy today to have your muscle balance assessed and treated.
Do you Exercise Regularly?
Athletes get muscle imbalances more than sedentary people because we put in more repetitions. Stay tuned for more info on muscle imbalances, exercises to avoid in order to maintain as much balance in your muscles as possible, and exercises that are pretty safe. The problem is not that you don't exercise enough, but that you may be doing exercises that are adding to your muscle imbalance and not doing the exercises that correct your muscle imbalance.

Do you have leg pain?

4/4/2024

Amy's third course has just been released, entitled Lower Quadrant Active Treatment.

Do not do seated knee extensions, here is a course excerpt to explain why.

‘Exercises to avoid include:
1) open-kinetic-chain quads: since the foot is not planted, gluteus medius cannot prevent the iliotibial band (ITB) from scraping the patella laterally over the femur, causing wear and tear on both bony surfaces,
2) sidelying leg raises/ abduction (unless your patient is bedridden): this works the ITB, which too easily dominates over gluteus medius’

In Amy's online Lower quadrant Active Treatment Course, Health Professionals and Students Can Learn: To identify the common muscle imbalances in the lower quadrant and be able to assess and treat/ prevent these conditions with exercises and alignment: hip, knee, ankle and foot pain (particularly if from ITB shortness). To have the secret to treating plantar fasciitis and which muscle to strengthen to stop wearing orthotics, and many other timeless, valuable tips from evidence-based postgraduate courses which Amy took and put into practice over the past 25 years.

Not a Health Professional or Student? If you are an Ontario resident, you can see Amy in person in Niagara Falls or online.

Stay tuned for an explanation of what muscles imbalances are and why they should be avoided.

Are Sit-Ups Good For Us?

3/31/2024

Here is an excerpt from my Course to explain: “Educate your patient re: exercises to avoid: sit-ups and crunches of any kind, leg lifts – low back pain is an accumulation of bending, sitting, and twisting. What are sit-ups? While working out to try to improve our health, should we do things that can accumulate to cause low back pain? It is probably okay under age twenty, when we are made out of rubber, but after age twenty, if you want to age gracefully and painlessly, I don’t recommend them.”
What to do instead:I teach people an exercise to contract their deepest abdominal muscle, Transversus Abdominis, while lying on their back. It is very gentle and effective at getting rid of low back pain and preventing the pain from coming back. And it doesn’t have to be done for maintenance - instead, there is a daily strategy that I teach on their first day which is easy to continue with. Many people have returned to me after only a few days to report that their chronic pain is already gone!
Preview my Low Back Active Treatment Course
Do you have back pain but you are not a health professional?If you are an Ontario resident, you can see me in person in Niagara Falls or on the computer for online visits. I have helped people with back pain before through online visits. Book online or contact us today!

Low Back Pain, Sit-ups

3/15/2024

Do you or your patients have low back pain?
My second online course has just been released. Health professionals and students can learn how to assess and treat people with LBP, sciatica, and/or piriformis syndrome actively with only two or three gentle exercises lying down - including MY version of transversus abdominis strengthening, and a lifelong strategy to prevent the pain from coming back.
Take my course today!
A few years after graduating from university, I took an amazing course on muscle balance. I learned two exercises that I decided to apply to all of my low back pain patients in the busy clinic that I was managing for the next 30 days. They were so effective that I never went back to the old methods. I modified them both and share all the details in my low back course..

Do you have back pain but you are not a health professional?
If you are an Ontario resident, you can see me in person in Niagara Falls or on the computer for online visits. I have helped people before through online visits. Book online through the button on the Home page or contact us today!
Are you wondering why you shouldn’t do sit-ups?
Stay tuned for a snippet from my course in my next Blog.