Hey, dudes. Been lifting on/off for about 4 years now after clawing my way out of a sedentary life. My problem is that I’ve been developing (what looks like) scoliosis? I don’t know anything about it, and I haven’t seen a doc. But my left trap is obviously bigger than my right one, and my spine is curving a bit.
I did, at one point, injure my left rotator cuff due to over-use. Never saw a doc, just took time off from the gym/physical activity. It’s possible that it was a tear. Could it be that my left trap is compensating for the weakness in my rotator cuff?
Additionally, I injured my left rhomboid/mid trap in a deadlift session about 2 years back. Never saw a doc. There seems to be a trend, here.
I also injured my left hip due to an impingement syndrome. This one was bad, and I did see a doc. Got x-rays, and was sent to a pt. I was prescribed some exercises to activate the glutes, and everything was gravy.
Seems like the left side of my body is pretty fucked up. And I also should probably see a doc, now that I think about it. There’s not really any pain in my body, except for a dull ache in my left shoulder on shoulder day. My left trap generally does feel a bit more of a pump than my right one.
Below are the pics (completely relaxed).
[Edit: Above is front, below is back]
If it would help that I include anything else, just ask, and I’d be more than happy to provide the info.
Any help that you guys could provide would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
[edit: actually, after looking at the pics for a bit, it seems like my left shoulder is just super fucking tight. so anything you guys could recommend to help me loosen it up a bit would be greatly appreciated.]
I have/had (it’s clearing up fast) that was diagnosed as hip OA. It also presented very much like hip impingement. They just pounced on OA when x-ray showed degenerative changes in my hip joint. That was about 9 years ago. I was told no hope of improvement. I got (and still have to a degree) the twist all the way up my spine, dodgy shoulders, muscle imbalances.
I’m doing great now, churning out pullups, flags (so shoulders now sound despite hardly being able to move them 2 years ago). I’m also learning oly lifting, running, deadlifting, squatting (which I couldn’t do for years). So there’s hope if you do have something similar going on!
After seeing scores of experts and getting nowhere I started researching for myself. I’d recommend you look at :
Postural Restoration Institute - their best resource is their articles. In particular look at the ones referring to hip impingement and also FA IR (Femoraral Acitabular Internal Rotation - excuse the spelling!!). There’s a whole series of the latter which I suspect you will relate too. There’s also some specifically on shoulders but my guess is you’ve had a sacral torsion (twist / tilt in your pelvis) that’s caused the weaknesses elsewhere.
If you’re on fb follow NeuroKinetic Therapy.
For comparison purposes, I had / have:
Restricted ROM in hip joint - pinching in groin
Atrophied right glutes
Weak, inactive right psoas
Overactive left psoas
Tight, over developed right rec fem, vastus lateralis, TFL
Tightness all up the right side of my spine
Shoulder impingement in both shoulders
Tight biceps, pec minor, pec major, upper traps
Weak, inactive lower & mid traps & lats
A whole bunch of side to side differences in back - both shoulders problematic, but in different ways.
A right on right sacral torsion. So my sacrum - bottom of spine - is stuck in part of the normal gait cycle. Tilted to the right and rotated back on the right. This throws the whole body out of alignment and creates havoc. A quick and dirty test to see if you have something similar is:
Lie flat on your back, arms stretched out to the side with hands at shoulder height.
Bend knees and place both feet flat on the floor.
Keeping your upper body and hands in firm contact with the floor let your knees drop to one side. Then the other.
Are you tighter on one side? Is it hard to get your knees to the floor on one side without your shoulder lifting?
If anything sounds familiar tell me more and I’ll see if I can suggest any links that might help.
I could not get my knees to touch on the left side without forcing them down with extra torsion, but they would on the right, unassisted.
I have:
Overactive left psoas, weak right psoas
Bigger left trap, inhibited right trap
Bigger left arm, smaller right arm (by 1/3")
Smaller left mid-trap, Bigger right mid-trap
Smaller left quad, Bigger right quad
Smaller left lower lat, Bigger right lower lat
Extremely tight hip flexors
Extremely tight hamstrings
I feel the pump more in my left lower back than right lower back on leg day when i do deads.
Back when I had the hip problems, I couldn’t squat. It hurt to walk in early 2011 when I tried doing sumo deadlifts. It hurt to walk again in late 2012 when I had been doing oly lifting for a while. Then the glute exercises kicked in at the end of 2012. Now, I’ve got a traditional deadlift of 405 x 8, and a squat of 365 x 1. The squat is slightly below parallel.
Also, my left trap almost ALWAYS feels a pump. Even just sitting here, my right trap feels shriveled up, but my left feels it.
I do think my left shoulder might be a problem, though, in addition to the hip problems. I never had anyone take a look at it, and in the pic it looks like the left scap isn’t retracting properly, compared to the right one.
I have no idea how to stretch. I don’t do any. Should I be? I’ve heard people say stretching is bad, and that agreed with the lazy side of me, so I just kind of went with that.
Any articles or resources you could recommend for both problems would be really great! I appreciate your input.
It sounds as if you’ve definitely got a twist in your pelvis (sacral torsion).
To help you understand how this could possibly cause all of your symptoms I’ll give a rough explanation. During normal gait your sacrum (bone at the base of your spine) leans from side to side and rotates one way and the other. Pretty much the whole body is tied in to the movement of the sacrum - it works like a unit. So for example, when the sacrum leans to the right and rotates to the right during normal gait the following happens:
WORKING UP THE CHAIN
Lumber spine leans left and rotates left
Thoracic spine leans right and rotates right
Cervical spine leans left and rotates left
Scapular move in relation to thoracic spine
WORKING DOWN THE CHAIN
Innominates (big wings of the pelvis) move in relation to the sacrum - don’t remember exact details, but one side goes into posterior rotation, inflare and downslip - the other into anterior rotation, outflare and upslip (or something like that).
One leg will temporarily become longer than the other due to one actual hip socket moving in relation to the other (hip socket is attached to innominate).
All sorts of stuff happens all the way down the legs.
This is all normal. Until the sacrum gets jammed or more restricted in a certain position. When that happens everything up and down the chain also gets ‘stuck’ or stiff leading to all sorts of problems from ankle, foot, knee pain to stiff locked up hips, sore back and shoulder impingement and stiff neck.
IT IS VERY HARD TO FIX AS YOUR WHOLE BODY IS LOCKED INTO A SERIES OF PROTECTIVE FAULTY MOVEMENT PATTERNS.
It tends to be the case that muscle get tight because another muscle is weak. So first thing would be to address the weak, inactive muscles (You’ve already seen the effect of getting the glutes firing properly!). Target that lazy psoas next.
Look up Eric Cressey’s material on shoulders. His three part “Shoulder Savers” series is informative. He’s part one - you’ll find the others from here:
We don’t know what kind of sacral torsion you have, but the quick test you did shows that it’s rotating to the right (same as me). We don’t know what way it’s tilting though. So I think it would be either a right on right or a right on left. It won’t do you any harm to try the corrections for both of these and see how you feel when you stand up. When I do the right on right sacral torsion correction I feel amazing when I stand up from it. If one feels really good keep doing it.
One good stretch to do is the test I mentioned in the last post. Spend plenty of time trying to hang out in that position - get those knees stretched down to the floor on the left before and after every workout. If you’ve got a habit of sleeping, sitting or standing with one side of your pelvis rotated back stop that habit now!!!
The Trigger Point Therapy workbook will be a big help to you. It’s basically a guide to getting out all the knots and tightness through trigger point therapy - foam roller of digging in at the knots with a lacrosse ball. That’ll work better than stretching for you. The book is really good because it tells you how to find the offending trigger points based upon your symptoms.
You should see a physio. In my experience they’ll home in on one thing and miss out on the big picture. But give it a try and see what they come up with. They’ll almost certainly be able to help with some corrective exercises for your shoulder and will probably give you a more accurate picture of all your movement impairments and postural problems.
I don’t think it’ll be an easy fix, but keep doing your homework and you’ll gradually learn to adapt your training to move things in the right direction.
I had similar posture that was mostly corrected by a sports chiropractor, soft tissue work and rehab (same place, the latter two performed by the chiro’s assistant). For me it wasn’t driven from the hip.
The soft tissue work made the most difference, but was very painful. Work was done at the top of my pecs directly below the collarbone, the “outer pecs” where the pec ties into the shoulder, my front delts, and then my subscapularis. The subscap work was the most painful by far. Same work was done on both sides, but once it was all released, a lot of the imbalances just disappeared since I was just genuinely tighter on one side.
If you’re tight in any of those areas, it can contribute to your current posture. It sounds like you may have other issues too, and I can’t speak to them, but if you haven’t worked any of those areas with a tennis or lacrosse ball, this may be the time to start.
Don’t know if that’s helpful beyond “may want to get looked at by someone who specializes in soft tissue work”. I went with the team chiropractor for the local professional football team (this was after having had little success with sports medicine). I felt more confident working with someone who focused on athletes.
Here’s how I generally stand when I’m in an “idle” position. Not necessarily completely relaxed, but just my everyday posture. There’s a noticeable (in my opinion) size discrepancy between my left rear delt and my right rear delt. I’ve done 100 band pull aparts a day for the past 2 years, so I don’t really get why they’re not a similar size. I suppose my right just does less of the movement? Should I be doing unilateral work to address strictly the right side of my back/shoulders? Also, note how the left arm fades inward starting at the elbow. I think that’s another sign of my left shoulder being internally rotated.
Additionally, I’ve been working on what you guys suggested and I really feel like things are starting to loosen up. I think my left biceps is especially tight, as well, so I’ve been working on getting that looser, too.
