Upper Crossed Syndrome
Do you have rounded shoulders?
What about a chin that juts forward?
Come learn how to get rid of it!
Upper Crossed Syndrome (UCS). Have you ever heard of this condition? It’s a fancy name for what happens when you have poor posture over a long period of time. It results in a criss cross pattern of tight and weak muscles. First, the pec muscles in front get short and tight, while the opposite muscles, the middle/lower traps, get long and weak. In addition, the upper trap and levator scap muscles get tight (muscles in the back of your neck), while the deep cervical (neck) flexors in front become weak. The picture below depicts this pattern. Simply put, it’s a push-pull type effect. If the muscle in the front is weak, the muscle in the back is tight; if the muscle in the front is tight, then the muscle in the back is weak.
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How does this happen? When we are hunched over sitting or standing too long, looking down at a monitor or screen at length, repetitively bent over to perform our jobs, etc., it eventually causes the muscles to stay in the state they’re put in for so many hours throughout the day as gravity is constantly pushing down on us. Some activities you may not realize that can cause UCS over a long period of time: reading, watching tv, biking.
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All of this results in some postural changes. Forward head posture, rounded shoulders, and shoulder blades that wing out are just a few things that can happen. In a perfect world, the middle of your ear should be in line with your shoulders vertically. If it is not and your ear is in front of your shoulders, here’s a statistic that might open your eyes. For every inch your head moves forward, it gains 10 pounds in weight - aka 10 more pounds of pressure on your spine.
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Now what can all of these postural changes lead to? Decreased flexibility, decreased range of motion of different parts of the spine, and it could even lead to Lower Crossed Syndrome. (See earlier blog post to learn about LCS). It is also important to note that UCS doesn’t only cause physical changes. These imbalances can lead to symptoms such as headaches, neck pain, back pain, jaw pain, fatigue, pain or numbness and tingling in the arms/hands.
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So UCS is one big muscle imbalance that we must work to reverse to keep the integrity of our spine and the muscles that move it.
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In the office we dive into a lot of functional rehab to wake the right muscles up and get them activating when they’re supposed to again, but at home we can do what I call the “posture trio” to start combatting UCS every single day. The posture trio is as follows: chin retractions (to activate the deep neck flexors), Bruegger’s (to activate the middle to lower traps), door stretch (to stretch the pecs). In addition to these I like adding in a lacrosse ball to the upper traps as well as the pecs. All of these are shown and explained in the video below! Notice that we’re stretching the muscles that are short and tight, and we’re strengthening the muscles that are elongated and weak.
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With many jobs, it is inevitable that you are in compromised posture positions. Since sometimes it is impossible to avoid, we must work every day to combat UCS by doing preventative stretches and exercises like these!
