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This is Brent coming at you with another
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this video we're going to go after our pectoralis minor, a muscle that has a
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propensity to get very overactive, very short in all of those individuals with
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upper body dysfunction. I'm going to have my friend, Yvette, come out and help me
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demonstrate this technique. Now, first things first, we always want to talk
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about body position. So I'm going to make sure that Yvette scoots down her hips right next
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to mine so that I don't have to reach across the table, I can save my own low
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back and my own mechanics. Next thing we have to think about is our kenesis, so
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what is it that my pectoralis minor does, and with attachments that ribs three,
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four, five, and my coracoid process, it is going to protract, downwardly rotate,
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depress, and anteriorly tip my scapula. Now, the problem that comes in, is most people will
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go, 'okay, great, got the pectoralis minor joint actions
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going.' Understand how to stretch it, you put the person in position and you do
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this and what do you feel? Nothing. This isn't enough of a stretch,
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this doesn't take the pectoralis minor through enough lengthening for us to get
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any sort of result. So we've got to use a little bit of a secret here, or a little
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bit of a trick, very fancy piece of equipment also known as a gym hand towel.
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I'm going to have Yvette go ahead and curl up, I'm going to place this towel out of
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the level of the inferior angles of her scapula, and then have her lay back over
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it. Now you will have to experiment with the size of the towel a little bit.
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I find that the hand towels that we have here work very well, a bath towel
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would probably be way too big. Now, I'm going to take Yvette through these joint actions
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of elevation and upward rotation, and then I push her back into retraction, I
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have that towel pressing on her inferior angle this way, and pressing her thoracic
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spine into extension which is going to promote
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a lot of posterior tipping. So now, when I go to press down, now how does that feel
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Yvette? She can feel it in the lateral portion of her pec, and I can actually
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feel that first resistance barrier. Now, why would I want to stretch the pec
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minor? I think some of you are probably thinking, 'you just showed us a
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pec stretch on that video on pectoralis major', and that's true, however, the pec
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minor can be hidden in that stretch. These big stretches, these big motion
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stretches, latissimus dorsi and pectoralis major specifically, there's a
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lot of structures that could be involved. We could have pec major, we could
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have lat, teres major, subscapularis. If I know that the pec minor is bound down,
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and I want to hit that structure specifically, this is probably
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the best thing I can do. Further, if I want to hit pec major, and I want to make
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sure I'm hitting pec major, I'm sure some of you guys have already experienced
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where you take somebody into a pectoralis major stretch, and they're not
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really feeling it throughout their entire pec, they just keep pointing at
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their pec minor. Well, if you want to get this stretch better, you might have to do
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a PEC minor stretch first. Now, all that set aside, how can we make
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my pectoralis minor stretch a little bit better. I'm sure you will run into
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people whose pectoralis minor is like a leather strap, and it just won't let go.
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You can't get that release you're looking for. I have found a couple of tricks.
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Number one, pectoralis minor, for whatever reason, seems to be very related to
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stiffness in the thoracic spine. I don't know if there's some sort of arthro
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kinematic reflex happening there that tones up the pec minor, but doing any
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sort of release work for your thoracic spine, you can see that video on
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thoracic spine self-administered mobilization from my videos, my manual
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therapists can do your mobilizations, I think you'll find if you
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do that first it's a lot easier to get a release in the pec minor. Further, the pec
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minor has a propensity to really get laden down with trigger points. It might
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also be much more effective for you to do your self-administered release
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with a softball like I had on previous videos, or my manual therapist can do this manually.
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So, once again, to just kind of repeat here, to improve the lengthening ability
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to get the most out of a stretch for my pec minor, it is probably best to do my
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thoracic spine release, and my pectoralis minor release first. And, if you are
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having problems with somebody with upper-body dysfunction, doing these
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techniques before you do some of your bigger structures like pec major
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and latissimus dorsi is probably going to also increase the effectiveness of
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your technique. So just going through the technique one more time here,
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I have that towel set at her inferior angles, I'm going to set her arm
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into slight flexion here, that's going to help promote the
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posterior tipping. I'm going to put my hand over the lateral third of her
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clavicle and her acromion process, not the humeral head, remember my pectoralis
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minor does not cross my shoulder. So I want to be here. I'm then going to take
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her into elevation or upward rotation, and push her back into retraction and
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posterior tipping. I hope you got all of that. So that's elevation, upward
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rotation, push back on the lateral third of the clavicle in the acromion process.
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It's actually a really easy technique once you practice it a couple of times. I
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hope you get great results from this technique. I think your clients will
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definitely appreciate the specificity of this technique and what they can get out