I’ve been experiencing a feeling like I’m missing a muscle on the left side of my back when I have my arm out to 90 degrees as in the down position of a dumbell overhead press.
I feel it in OHP’s and lat pulldowns really and I would say its around the teres major muscle according to this picture. It’s not painful, but the arm doesn’t feel like it grooves correctly. http://anjasmith.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/back-muscles.jpg
Also, I worked ut last week and was forced to use a smith machine(). As I was finishing up my last set of incline bench, my left shoulder started to bother me. I called it a day. I tried to do flat bench the other day, and I was hearing it crack after the 3rd rep onward. It wasn’t painful but it sounded pretty bad.
If I were to put my hands on a pull-up bar while being grounded, and then let my body sag into the ground while hanging onto the pull up bar, my left shoulder cracks and my shoulder feels like it gets displaced. Again, theres no pain though.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you ahead of time.
probably best to to find a picture nd point it…you aren’t “missing” a muscle btw!
Some people are born with congenital absence of a muscle or a bone (clavicle is most commonly absent). Pectoralis major is the most commonly missing muscle. Other muscles such as pyrimidalis, palmaris longus, and psoas minor are optional muscles in some humans, psoas minor for example is only found in about 50 percent of the population.
In the back, absense of levator scapulae and rhomboid minor are the most common. It is of course possible that due to nerve damage from any number of causes you may have a muscle which is not activating, this happens commonly to serratus anterior, parts of the deltoid and the rhomboids. A practitioner could run you through an exam to check out what the problem is, if anything is actually wrong at all.
Shoulder “sagging” is commonly a Rotator cuff/capsular laxity problem, subluxation or disruption of the acromioclavicular joint due to damage or the complete separation of ligamentous structures i.e the acromioclavicular, trapezoid, conoid, and or coracoacromial ligaments. Again, and exam would help rule out any problems and point towards a modality of treatment.
Should I see a physical therapist?
Your least expensive bet, if insurance will not be covering this for you, might be to see an ART practitioner.
Not only would you have a person who can definitely tell you whether a muscle is missing in the area you suspect, or whether there are other frank abnormalities or severe lacks of development, you’d get an ART session out of it, which might well help your function.
(ART is Active Release Therapy. Googling it will yield a website that lists practitioners.)
