In my quest to be live without pain, I keep delving deeper into the rabbit hole. The problem is most of my pain is in my mid to upper back and those areas are attached to everything. With that, my search for some answers is not clear cut.
Most everything I have been reading as well as where I left off years ago with a physical therapist pointed towards thoracic mobility. Yes, my thoracic mobility is severely restricted, but no matter how much work I have done on it, it's made no difference in my pain management.
This week I took a step in another direction and started stretching my pecs more. It started making an immediate difference. I feel pretty stupid not realizing this earlier, but in powerlifting when you look at most warm-ups and stretching, it's very focused on the lower body/core, back, and shoulders.
Being that the pectoralis major is an antagonist of the shoulder abductor, working that area of mobility has not been enough for me. Overly contracted pecs can limit the range of shoulder motion and can clearly cause a whole hose of issues as I'm finding out.
Perhaps, I have been plagued with this worse than most powerlifters due to spending most of my tenure as a bench only guy. Of course, I still squatted and deadlifted heavy, but surely chasing down 600 lb raw benches and 900 lbs equipped took their toll.
Anyway, I am starting to make progress doing some simple pec stretches. Interestingly, they hurt more in my upper and mid back when I do them than in my pecs. This should tell me something. I'm having less radiating pain, especially in the morning when it is normally at its worst. I'm also having less pain in my lower back, which I don't think is a coincidence.
Now I'm sure some of it is postural as well. I sit at my job often and do a lot of work on a computer. It's another aspect of my recovery that I'm efforting. I ordered a Thompson Bowtie from Spud Inc to help with that along with the stretching. I'll keep you all posted.
So if you are having some back trouble that you can't quite get to, investigate some pec stretching. It might just be the answer you have been looking for.