Muscular dysbalance of the cervical spine

Muscular imbalances in the cervical area can be classic neck tension. Whether it is due to sitting in front of the computer for a long time with a bent neck or due to psychological stress, which makes you pull your shoulders tense towards your ears. Various stretching exercises are available here.

Sit or stand upright for this. For the sake of simplicity, the exercise for stretching the right side of the neck is instructed. The left ear sinks down to the left shoulder.

The right elbow pulls slightly down towards the floor, so that the right shoulder and right ear are even further apart. In order to shift the stretch more backwards, the chin is also turned towards the left shoulder. To shift the stretch forward, the gaze moves with the head up to the right, combined with a slight overstretch at the neck.

Stretches are held for about 30 seconds. Another simple exercise is shoulder circling. This moves the tense region through, stimulates blood circulation and thus relaxes the muscles. These artricles may also be of interest to you in this respect:

Physiotherapy for headaches/migraines of small children
Physiotherapy for children with shoulder and neck tension

Muscular dysbalance of the lumbar spine

Muscular imbalance in the lumbar spine (lumbar spine, lower back) can manifest itself, for example, in a widespread postural defect: the hollow back, in technical terms a hyperlordosis of the lumbar spine. The musculature around the lower trunk area is not sufficiently developed, the body hangs in its ligaments. The pelvis tilts forward, the abdomen seems to be stretched out forward, the lower spine bent forward.

If you get used to this relaxed posture over time, a lot more happens in the body in addition to the obvious posture deficit: the intervertebral discs are no longer evenly loaded by the forward curvature of the spine, but constantly press the tilted vertebral bodies more in the rear area and less in the front area. The muscles in the area are continuously shortened, which at some point limits the mobility etiology. This also affects the hip flexors in the front area, due to the tilting of the pelvis.

The abdominal muscles, on the other hand, are constantly lengthened so that they are not able to exert their full strength. Band structures and fasciae also adapt to the posture, changing their structure and flexibility. Finally, the postural defect also causes not only the problems described in situ, but also continues to cause problems in the adjacent areas. For example, the thoracic spine responds to excessive prophylaxis with a backward curvature to keep the body straight overall, and the muscles continue to pull on their chains in which they are tied. The decisive factor here is a posture school with the teaching of a straight body feeling, as well as an intensive training of the abdominal and lumbar muscles, a stretching program for the lower back and hip flexor muscles and a movement training of the spine.