Hello! In this video, I’m gonna show you how to stretch your rhomboid muscle. So when we take a look at our rhomboid muscle you can actually see that it is aligned from the spine to your shoulder blade (scapular). Generally, when we talk about stretching, you wanna think about pulling the muscles away from the origin. When you contract your muscles, the origin and the insertion goes towards each other, and when you’re stretching it goes away from each other.
You need to stretch your muscles because you have worked them. So let’s take a look at the anatomy of our rhomboid.
The rhomboid is actually just behind your trapezius. When you take a look at the back of our body, this is what you will find. The trapezius is a very big piece of muscle at your back and when we talk about stretching the rhomboid we can’t take trapezius out of the equation. Looking at how the muscle is aligned, you can be stretching the trapezius as well but it’s how you place your hand (or rather how you place your arm) that’s gonna determine whether you’re stretching more the rhomboid or you’re stretching more the trapezius. Our rhomboid is actually originating from the spine and inserting into your shoulder blade (scapular) and you realize that this muscle only goes in one direction, so when it’s contracting it is actually pulling your shoulder blade towards your spine. When somebody tells you to pull your shoulders back or to squeeze your shoulder blade together you’re basically working your rhomboid.
All you want to do is just put your right arm put your left arm across and put your right arm over. You want to take note is that your arm should be placed near the elbow. Common mistakes people make is that when you’re doing it make sure you’re not elevating your shoulder, let it drop until you feel the stretch along the rhomboid. When you’re elevated you’re not going to feel so much on the rhomboid. Go ahead give it a try and let me know if you can or cannot feel the muscle. I’ll be posting more videos on how you can stretch different parts of your body. Please take care and I’ll see you around.
