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the ground. When fully extended and with the thumb rotated down, you have just shortened the pect muscles and stretched the rhomboids. You have just experienced in a round about way an antagonist and agonist muscle group. Now these aren't true antagonist muscles because they aren't directly related, but their actions are.
By understanding the relationship of these muscles you can now look at an imbalance you may have. Almost all of our prolonged activities involve a flexed position. Right now as I work on the computer I am slumped forward a bit, My arms are in front of me and rotated in to type. If I am tired my head may jut forward causing my upper back to hunch. If i did the dishes in my sink I would be in a similar position, if I changed my oil, ironed a shirt ect...almost all of our activities keep us in flexed positions with our arms extended so it is only natural that our pect muscles eventually get a little shorter and to a degree more stronger than their competing rhomboid muscles. If you feel around just below your collarbone

you might feel some tenderness from just above the nipple diagonally up to your shoulder. If you thrust your shoulders back you will feel even more tenderness because you are stretching these short muscles. This is our imbalance...short pects, stretched rhomboids. Now because our pect are short, our shoulders are rounded forward and our head is creeping out in front of us along with the hump in our back that seems to be growing like aunt ednas. This starts to cause the muscles in our neck to strain, which in turn irritates the nerves who, as cruel and ironic as this is, tell our brain that we are in pain and also tell the muscles to relax or to contract!...So how is this for a chicken or the egg dilemma...Once the sequence is started, the muscles that caused the nerves to fire off pain signals can't stop contracting because those very same nerves start telling the muscle to contract and...well you get the point. I hope.
So the first order of business is to become aware of your posture. Take a hard look at your daily activites and how you perform them. This is important because we are going to have to do two things. We need to re-establish communication between your brain and muscles and between your muscles and muscles. By you becoming aware of how you are holding your body, your brain will start to make the required adjustments to get you there. Once it knows where it wants to be and sends messages to the muscles to get you there,

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