3 Home Exercises To Get Rid Of Rib Cage Pain For Good

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

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.

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