Name: Lower Trapezius Manual Muscle Testing (MMT) for an Active Population
Uploaded: 2023-04-26T01:02:06.000Z
Duration: 5 min 53 s
Description: A comprehensive tutorial on MMT for lower trapezius muscles - learn which parts to assess, what results to look for, and how to adjust for an active population. Perfect for physical therapy professionals.

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https://stream.mux.com/KowMFVujmQU43rzL401Ec1nenUObNTHb9nk00NyyLo8wc.m3u8

A comprehensive tutorial on MMT for lower trapezius muscles - learn which parts to assess, what results to look for, and how to adjust for an active population. Perfect for physical therapy professionals.

Introduction to Lower Trap Muscle Testing

Performing the Lower Trap Manual Muscle Test

Identifying Symptoms of Dysfunction

Assessing Mobility and Its Impact on Performance

Review and Best Practices for Testing

Lower Trapezius Manual Muscle Testing (MMT) for an Active Population

This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're going to go over lower trap manual muscle testing for an active or athletic population. So we're going to go ahead and get rid of that Kendall scale for now. We're going to replace it with a simpler scale of strong, weak with compensation, or with pain. But we're going to pay closer attention to the details of our test because we know in this active or athletic population, we're putting a lot of load, a lot of stress on their musculoskeletal system. Sometimes it doesn't take a very big change to start leading to some dysfunction and pain. So I'm gonna have my friend Melissa come out, she's going to help me demonstrate this test. The test is in prone position, unfortunately even if you have a face hole cut out, chances are for this test they're not going to be able to get to the face hole cut out, because you need their shoulder to hang off the side of the table. So you're going to go ahead and have them turn their head towards your test position. Now I'm going to go ahead and bring her arm where I want it, so it's going to be about 45 degrees, or in line with the lower trap fibers. Remember those lower trap fibers kind of come off that medial portion of the spine of the scapula here, going down to T6-T12. So I can feel them right in there. Now i'm going to start her assuming that she's not cheating now, and i pulled her into this position. I'm going to cue her into some depression, retraction, and to make sure she's in upward rotation. That inferior angle should be bowed out a little bit, because that's what my lower trap does. The first test I might do is just go, ok i'm going to let go of your arm. Can you hold this position, and see if she can hold it for a few seconds. Not so easy, not so easy at all. Then I might have her start over. Okay let's go ahead and see if we can do that again. Let's go ahead and come up into the position Now I'm going to add a little external resistance, and the first thing I get with Melissa is not necessarily weakness, which is not uncommon on this test. I don't get weakness, I get scapular elevation. Of course the lower trap doesn't do scapular elevation, so what's going on here? We have synergistic dominance, we have compensation. The overactive synergists for my lower trapezius are going to be muscles like my rhomboids, my levator scapulae, potentially even my upper traps trying to stabilize for a lower trap that can't hold my scapula back into a little bit of depression, a little bit of retraction, an upward rotation. So let me show you guys that one more time. You can exaggerate a little bit this time Melissa. I put on some external resistance, and she goes straight into this elevated position with her scapula. Now just like all of the other manual muscle tests for active populations we've been talking about it, is also not uncommon for you to go okay, raise your arm, and somebody gets to about there, and can't go any further. Don't forget with this particular test, mobility is going to be quite the issue as well. If they don't have good thoracic mobility, they won't be able to posteriorly tilt their scapula and get themselves into position where they're parallel with the table. So that might be thoracic spine mobility. Just getting into posterior tipping of the scapula also requires optimal extensibility of the pectoralis minor. So something else for you guys to think about with this particular test. It's often upper body dysfunction as a whole that is contributing to poor performance, not just lower trap. One way to help differentiate what's going on is do your mobility work first, and then retest the lower trap. So if you do all of the mobility work, and all of a sudden you get up here, the range of motion is perfect, and they can hold that position with a little bit of external resistance. Maybe the lower trap is strong, you just have mobility issues. What you also might find is you do all your mobility work, you get your range of motion back, and they're only strong in the range of motion they used to have. Which means when you're thinking about your activation techniques, you need to be thinking about how am I going to strengthen this person through that range of motion they didn't have before the mobility work, so that I can get their lower trap functioning well through the entire range of motion. So just a real quick review on this test here again guys. Make sure you have them prone, head facing you. You're going to go ahead and cue them to 45 degrees, or in line with their lower trap fibers. Remember those lower trap fibers come off the medial portion of the spine of the scapula. I'm going to go ahead and make sure she starts in good position. I'm just going to add a little external resistance. Of course now Melissa's testing weak, but a very common pattern to also see is go ahead and exaggerate for me Melissa, is this elevation of the scapula. I hope you guys took a lot from this video. I hope you get a lot from this test as far as refining your intervention and exercise selection. I look forward to hearing your results. 

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