That freaking thing can hurt.

Having the good ol' Kyphosis thing going on, brought about a few interesting points. First thing that came to mind, was an interesting article by a good friend, and probably one of the best rehabilitation/athletic personal trainers I have met. Dean Somerset, you can find him here wrote this little gem on Scapular Stability. Now, don't hate him for the little picture of the banjo boy from Deliverance, I think he has a fetish of finding terrifying images, but the article that can be found here is awesome. Why I link this, is for several reasons:

A: With spinal injuries/deformations, it changes the position of your scapula which then changes how your muscles direct your scapula across the range of motion of a regular shoulder movement. The main problem here, is that with either the injury or a deformation, certain movements if not supported correctly can actually lead to a worse injury, then you just snowball downhill from there.

B: A lot of people these days tend to do the whole desk jockey thing. Now, I know some good desk jockey's and Paula, who is a prime example here. Before working out, I think she had around 7 visits to the chiro. It helped to a certain degree, but just wasn't helping enough. She had a few years of competitive rythmic gymnastics under her belt, or scapula to be more precise, and had a terrible weakness in it. As Dean would say, she had, if she wanted to do it, winged shoulder blades. This is where the muscle is weak enough, that your scapula move to the absolute bottom of their range of motion, and "wing". Now, when Paula started at the gym, and actually started using TRX FORCE PACK, she had a rapid gain in muscle tone over about 5 weeks or so, and started noticing a significant increase in her posture as well as her shoulder strength.

So, my theory is, that because of the scapular placement due to the scoliosis, which is the same reason I can no longer swim freestyle, that my rotator cuff is going to be the thing to watch.. my next article, I will tell you about other parts of the back and how the function/dysfunction with scoliosis/kyphosis can be assisted with a good series of workouts.