Well, this week wasn’t very productive in the gym…. Actually pretty much not at all. I got in there once, but the whole rest of my week in the evenings I was up late organizing and getting all my stuff ready to move. I let it come down to the last minute, and even the last few hours as the painting crew was going to come in the day I got all my final items out haha.

But, I made do with what I could – namely putting into practice the different things we’ve been working on posture wise. I finally got my left shoulder and upper back to relax a couple weeks ago, and that’s allow for a lot more movement and freedom on my right side to slide back into where it should be, and allow the muscles to do their job more effectively. I’m also noticing all sorts of little quirks I was never aware of – when I fully extend in my right shoulder to lean over and reach for something, I can feel my left lower core activating, since I couldn’t fully extend in my left side to reach out for things, my right lower core never got any work done. When I would try to pull my right shoulder back to be “in place” with retracted scapulas, I would end up pulling back, but it would slightly twist my thoracic spine to the left to counter balance…. And on and on it goes as I’m unraveling all of these compensation patterns.

Now though, I can extend in my left shoulder/arm and feel my right core/hip enagaging and getting some much needed TLC. With my new freedom in my left scapula and the muscles surrounding it, I can experiment and pull it back like I used to on my right side, and voila, I can feel my upper body rotate to the right a little bit. Although I would have liked to have been able to spend more time working directly on my core and strengthening things, I was able to learn a lot this week about how my old habits of doing what I thought was the right thing to do, were actually digging me deeper into a hole.

Sure, it does make you feel dumb sometimes when you realized you’ve been doing this to yourself the whole time…. But if I can dig myself into a hole, I can climb my way out. This week should be much better with a couple normal (while still careful and light) gym sessions, and lots more core work PT homework.