Are you experiencing pain in your rib cage? That seemingly
came out of nowhere and there was no trauma or impact to lead to some of this
pain and discomfort? Then you may be experiencing pain in your rib cage that’s
stemming from stiffness or lack of mobility in the mid-back area in the mid
back section. Now, how these stiffnesses occur are because of the intimate
connection between your mid-back, your thoracic spine, and of course, your
ribs. There are multiple joints throughout the mid-back that create the
attachment between the thoracic spine, vertebrae and the ribs on either side.
And so if we look here, you can see, of course, the joints of the midsection,
which when we are bent forward, you can see the mid back curve here. If we look
to the back you see these nice spiny processes, spiny processes coming off the
side.
The transverse processes. And these create our cost of vertebral joints
which allow our rib cage to expand and contract when we take a deep breath in
and out. Now without the ability to contract and lift and expand and contract.
When we breathe in and out, it can create discomforts through the joints as
well as stiffness in the musculature. Today we will be speaking about three
main exercises that you can do to help with rib cage pain and stiffness. The
first exercise I’d like to talk about is a seated cat cow. A seated flexion
extension exercise.
So most times the rib cage will subluxated or become stiff
with forward flexion.So this is when we’re sitting in more of a bent posture just
like so. The idea of this exercise is to promote the mobility through your
mid-back section, to create extension so that the ribs can move more
congruently. So the best way to do this exercise is to bring your shoulders
back without rolling through the tops. So try to pull them directly back like
so, and you can see that my chest has come forward. I bring my hands, pointing
them ahead, pulling my shoulder blades back, and then we extend the neck over
the surface of our mid-back. Just like so.
Now during this exercise you can
perform breathing work. And so during my breath in, I’m extending my chest
forward, my mid-back and my head over the surface. And then during my breath
out, I can let everything relax. So from a side posture position, if we’re bent
forward and we take a deep breath in, we’re pulling the shoulder blades back,
pushing the chest forward and extending the head over the surface and relax,
letting the mid-back flex ahead again. Now you could alternatively do this
exercise from a quadruped position.
And so if I just find myself on the table
here with my knees shoulder width apart, hands shoulder width apart, we take a
deep breath in, flex the mid-back, and then breathe out and allow that mid-back
to dip down. So you’re pushing the chest to the floor during your breath out.
Breath in. We’re extending the mid-back and breath out dropping the mid-back.
Pushing our chest to the floor, creating mid-back mobility in the flexion
extension range.
The third exercise we’ll be talking about for rib cage pain
and mid-back stiffnesses is thoracic spine rotations. Now the thoracic spine
moves in both flexion and extension like this and like this. But it also moves
in a rotational pattern. And generally if we don’t have enough rotation through
our mid-back segments, our rib cage will become very, very stiff. So a great
exercise to do is and again a quadruped position. So you’ll find yourself on
the floor, on a bed or on a table like this one. And we thread the needle. So
we take the arm on the opposite side. In this case I’ll use my left arm and
we’ll ride it through this hole here. So we’re pulling through, dropping. I’m
breathing out and then a breath in. We rotate through that mid back. Now notice
I lack some mid back rotation and mobility so my pelvis swings from side to
side. Ideally your pelvis would stay in the same position so you wouldn’t
compensate too much through your lower back. To attain this range of motion,
you just take to that point of resistance in your mid back and then you drop it
back through.
This can be performed to 5 to 8 repetitions, but it’s really
about attaining the mobility. So take your time with these exercises. Don’t
focus on rushing through them or doing them as fast as possible. It’s meant to
feel the range of motion of the joint so that you can then understand well what
is what are my limitations. If you take your time and understanding the joint
and it’s mobility, it’s far easier to know how far you can take it. And then you’ll
notice your improvement slowly over time. So today we were addressing mid back
stiffnesses, rib cage stiffnesses, and we spoke about three main exercises that
you could perform at home to help with your rib cage pain. I hope this was
helpful.
