What Does Breathing Have to Do with Shoulder Mobility? Lots!

Of the 20+ muscles that control the shoulder joint, only two connect to your torso. The pectoralis major connects the humerus to the ribs, and the latissimus dorsi connects to the spine and pelvis. All of the other muscles attach to the shoulder blade complex. So the way the shoulder blade sits and moves has a massive affect on your shoulder health.

But what about breathing?

How Breathing Affects Shoulder Mobility

Breathing is so much more than just the way that we get oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. It is also a mechanical process that affects our nervous system, our heart rate, and our posture. The diaphragm muscle that bisects our torso at the base of the rib cage affects the shape and position of our ribs and spine.

All of the muscles that control shoulder blade movement and stability attach to the rib cage and spine.

Therefore the way that you breathe has a direct effect on your shoulder mobility.

One of the ways this can manifest is when we have difficulty fully exhaling and relaxing the diaphragm muscle. When we really let all the air out of our lungs our tranverse abdominus and oblique muscles contract to hold us up and the diaphragm returns to its resting shape: a raised dome that arches up into our chest cavity. This allows the rib cage to relax down too.

A common effect of stress and sitting to much is that we never fully exhale, and the diaphragm gets stuck in the on position with the ribs permanently lifted. This puts strain on the neck muscles and it changes the way our shoulder blades relate to their anchor points on the upper back.

When the lungs are over-inflated the rib cage and upper spine pull away from the shoulder blades. Then the shoulder blades then tend to ride higher on the back than is optimal, contributing to a hunched or rounded shoulder position. It also inhibits the action of important muscles like the serratus anterior that contribute to upwards rotation of the shoulder blade.

Read here about the importance of shoulder blade rotation in overhead shoulder position, and how it can prevent shoulder injuries.

Another common way that breathing can affect shoulder mobility is when one side of the rib cage inflates more than the other, contributing to imbalance between the right and left side of the torso. If one side of the rib cage is rotating up much more than the other the shoulders will respond very differently to the same type of exercise.

The full impact of breathing on movement mechanics is an area of intense study. The complexities are far beyond the scope of my humble blog, but I hope that this article gives you some appreciation of how the root cause of an issue—something like tight shoulders—may not be in the joint where you experience the symptom.

Happy Bendings!