Trigger Points in the Rhomboids

Video Transcript

"DR. CHRIS MANGO: Hi. This is Dr. Chris Mango, here in New York City. On behalf of Expert Village, we're going to be taking a look at trigger points today. The next muscle we're going to be taking a look at is the rhomboids. That's located between the shoulder blades. This is another big one that causes pain on a lot of people because, as you all know, we all sit at the desk too much and we all sit at the computer too much. When we sit in those positions, we're leaning with our shoulders forward, and what happens is that it puts way too much pressure on the muscles back there. So let's take a look at the muscle and find out how to treat it. Rhomboids are located right here. Now it connects between the middle part of the thoracic spine and the outside of the shoulder blade. Now, the trigger points can be here and here. Now, when this muscle acts up, that's when you feel that dull, deep pain in between the shoulder blades. This is a common thing that everybody has. We're going to take a look at the trigger points and how to fix it. So now I'm going to take a look at how to treat the rhomboid on the patient. The first thing we need to do is find the muscle, and to find the muscle, we need to find the scapula. When the patient is lying down, have her put her arm on her low back, and then now we can see it pops up here. So now we come to the middle of the spine and we know that the muscle runs down at this angle. So we come through here and we find the trigger points, which would be here and here. The patient now can drop her arm down, and we just hold and press like we did before. Let's move on to the next muscle."