Overuse on one side of the body can create muscular imbalance and pain.
The most common muscle pain complaint people contact me about is hip pain. Specifically right sided hip pain often accompanied by tightness in the ribs and waist on the same side. There is invariably accompanying same side shoulder pain, usually on the top of the shoulder and into the neck. To top it off, 100% of those people sit at a computer almost all day.
Many of these people have also experienced an accident or injury that has caused them to “cringe” and contract in a “trauma reflex.” As many readers already know, the trauma reflex involuntarily contracts one side of the waist and trunk rotators, which results in a slight side bending and twisting of the waist muscles on one side of the body. This occurs due to the need to compensate for an injury or to avoid pain on one side of the body.
Take a moment and visualize sitting at your computer. Do you lean into your screen to see? Reach for your mouse by rounding the shoulder forward and collapsing slightly in your ribcage? If yes, then you can begin to understand where some of this hip pain might be coming from.
Look in the mirror. Does your posture like either of these photos?:
There’s a definite pattern to overuse on the computer, and the photos above show how specific it is. Look at the photo on the left and notice how the shoulder on the right side sits lower than the left shoulder. Look at the wrinkles in the woman’s shirt right under her armpit and shoulder blade. Those wrinkles are caused by tight muscles of the shoulder and waist pulling the shoulder down.
Look at the photo on the right. Notice the same effect, only this time from the front. The shoulder on the left side (the client’s right side) is pulling noticeably downward, causing the ribs to contract. Again, the telltale wrinkles in the shirt just under the armpit let you know that there are muscles tightening unconsciously all the time, while my client is standing “at ease.”
If you are collapsed and contracted in the center of the body, the muscles of the hip joint will also be tight.
Some studies say that between 70-90% of people are right handed, which means that most people working on computers are also “mousing” with their right arm – reaching, focusing muscularly with the right shoulder/arm/fingers, slumping slightly into one hip as they work with their mouse. 
How does collapsing/slumping on one side of the body create hip pain?
The graphic on the right will help you understand: this shows the external oblique muscles (I call both sets of obliques the “waist muscles” to simplify things) that connect your ribs to your pelvis. The internal oblique muscles attach down into iliac crest of the pelvis. Both muscles help to twist the body and flex it laterally. They act like an accordion to bend the body to the side and like a “twist tie” to enable the torso to turn. They are instrumental in moving the hips up and down and stablizing the torso side to side.
If you habitually contract this muscle group, both the origin and the insertion of the muscles (the places where they connect on the skeleton) will become tight…all the way up into the ribs and down into the hip. The muscles will become “amnesic” at the level of the brain and nervous system (sensory motor amnesia, the root of most chronic muscle pain) and pain will develop. Learn to improve your awareness of your posture (and tendency to slouch to one side while at the computer), and methodically release the muscles to their original length and your pain will begin to diminish. It’s as simple as that.
If you are one of those people who works at a computer and experiences hip pain and/or same sided low back pain, there is hope. In my next post I will remind you of a few simple Somatic Exercises that will help you reverse this problem.
Click here to purchase my Pain Relief Through Movement DVD or Pain-Free Legs and Hips DVD and learn to reverse your pain on your own. Or contact Martha for an online Skype session or one on one clinical session.
