Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’ve got this knot in your back. This nagging aching lump that won’t go away. It makes your whole upper back feel tight. You’ve tried stretching it and you’ve tried rolling it and nothing really makes it go away long term.

But believe or not, this probably isn’t a muscle issue. It’s actually probably a rib!

When one of the vertebrae of the spine gets rotated, it pushes the rib either backwards or forwards often creating that tender bump you feel. And because the muscles of the upper back and neck have attachments on to the ribs (on the front, side or back of the body), it can feel like nagging muscle pain.

How to Know if It’s your Rib or a Muscle

Test #1

Sitting with good posture, arms crossed onto either shoulder, twist as if you are looking over your shoulder. Try both directions. If you feel a pinchy sensation in your upper back- you likely have a rib out of alignment.

Test #2

With a dowel or broom stick, stand with it raised straight over head. Lower down into a squat keeping the dowel/ broomstick above you.
If you feel a pinchy sensation ( usually just slightly off to one side), you’ve got a rib and vertebrae stuck!

Because the rib is sitting too far back , it’s not leaving enough clearance for the spine to extend. This leads to that jamming and pinchy sensation you feel with either rotation or extension.

What happens when a rib is stuck?

There are a lot of activities that require your spine to be able to extend and rotate ( such as throwing, swinging or racket sports, and even just shoulder checking). So if this can’t happen, your body will be forced to compensate and accomplish the movement another way. This includes

Low back pain developing since it needs to move MORE to make up for your stiff upper back
Shoulder pain developing because the shoulder blade can’t properly glide over the ribs.
Neck pain because the muscles of the neck are shared with the upper back and they are being held tight due to the stuck rib.
And even something like carpal tunnel developing because the tight neck muscles are pressing on the nerves that control the arm!

What to do if you think you have a rib issue

When you come in to see us at CE, our main focus is going to be retraining the rib cage to breath correctly. The ribs need to be able to expand for every breath you take so if they are stuck or being pushed back by the vertebrae not only will you not be able to move effectively but you won’t be able to breath effectively.

Treatment will likely involve positions of prolonged stretch and breathing deeply into that stretched position of the rib.

In addition, we’re going to give you strengthening exercises to support to spine so this doesn’t happen again!