I had a patient who came in with severe pain in his neck and down his arm.
In the initial conversation—it became clear what happened.
He had been painting all the ceilings in his house the last week.
During the evaluation I found two key missing pieces that were the cause of his ailments (and the solution).
The two findings
Number 1
He had limited thoracic extension.
You need your thoracic spine to extend (bend back) when you look up.
If it doesn’t, it creates an excessive hinge in the neck and can lead to a lot of soreness.
This is my go to exercise to reduce this. Do it 3-5x/day.
Number 2
This was the more important one.
He was missing cervical retraction.
This is the movement of pushing your head backward on your body.
One instructor at a course said it’s like what happens when you smell something bad. Another instructor comedically said “it’s like someone ugly is trying to kiss you”. Oddly enough, the later usually works better.
This cervical retraction is so important because it sets up the rest of the spine to extend.
Look at the x-ray below. The left is looking up with the head forward. The right is looking up with the head back.
The poison is the medicine
The solution to his pain was performing this routine 3x/day.
Within a week his pain had resolved.
summary
Sometimes proper spine motion needs to start at the very top.