What a morning!
WARNING! Long post, but worth the read 😉
Theres always with a little trepidation mixed in with the excitement when a fellow therapist books in to clinic 😳🤩
Presentation: A long history (years) of left shoulder discomfort and a LOT of clunking when performing internal and external rotation – you could feel it reverberating through their body!
It was the first time I had seen Nat from mybodyworks as a client, so we started from scratch. A comprehensive history gave me a few pointers, followed by some basic testing of balance and core. All was not well with their core …. As you may have heard me say before, ‘without a stable platform, limbs (and the neck) have to try and stabilise whilst mobilising, making them prone to injury’, we found the scars from a old belly button ring (removed ~7 years ago) was throwing things out with the intrinsic core.
We sorted that, and started looking at the shoulder. 🧠💪🏻
Almost 20 muscles involved in scapular stability and movement were dysfunctional. Compression of the humerus in the glenohumeral joint was also indicated. Thankfully all the ligaments were fine. I’d previously noticed (in the nicest possible way) a slightly wonky left eye, the history confirmed this might be a good place to start.
We quickly found the eyes were responsible for the lions share of the dysfunction.
What had caused the eye issues? In the consultation, we discussed a few minor bangs to the head, and a couple of low speed knocks and and bumps in cars. Possibly one or all of these contributed, it’s impossible to say, but it was good to be able to know where to start looking.
We found the most relevant tracking issue was convergence – tracking things that move closer to the face – performed the necessary work, and bingo pretty much everything turned on, AND the glenohumeral joint naturally decompressed 👨🏻🎓
Unfortunately the Serratus Anterior remained uncooperative. We tracked it back to a fall a few months back which had caused issues in the sacroiliac ligaments, and brought that back on line.
The look on their face was a picture. Remember they do what I do – but still that look of amazement gets me every time 🤩😍🤩
I asked them to perform the internal and external rotation at the shoulder movement again – no clunking, just a slight popping from the rear of the shoulder. A major result, but I wanted to see if we could clear as much as possible – it had been a very long drive after all 🚗
The final piece of the puzzle was revealed when we found the distal attachment point of the supraspinatus overactive, and the coracobrachialis under active. Release the correct portion of the muscle, activated the other (specificity was super important in this relationship) and the popping also disappeared. They could feel it slightly, but it was no longer audible, and certainly not reverberating around their body. With homework this should settle completely returning them to true awesomeness 🏋🏻♂️
So what does my mind look like when we’re tackling something so complex …. this >>>
We also discussed the Leaky Gut protocol, but you’ll have to look out for the video on that 😊👍🏻
2018 07 18