The “Y and T” Exercise

Video Transcript

Hey everyone, Dr. Alibhai here from Stuart Chiropractic. If you’re feeling really sore and experiencing a lot of pain in your shoulders, it could be due to not properly activating the right muscles, specifically the lower trapezius muscle, located near our shoulder blade. Sometimes, this can cause pain either there or on the outside of the shoulder.

Today, we’re going to cover an exercise called the Y and T exercise, which is designed to strengthen the shoulders and the middle of the back. Maria, I’m going to have you demonstrate the Y position. You’ll be lying on your stomach. Yes, that’s right. Position your arms into a ‘Y’ with your thumbs pointing upwards.

As you do this, squeeze your shoulder blades together right here. Make sure this area stays nice and loose. Okay, squeeze through here, holding for 10 seconds. That’s the Y position. Now, let’s switch to the T position. Bring your arms out to the sides to form a ‘T’.

Again, squeeze through here and hold that for 10 seconds.

We’ll do four rounds of this. Maria, you can bring your arms back down by your sides now. By strengthening this area, we aim to correct this common postural fault where our shoulders rise towards our ears, causing pain in the front, on the side, or through the shoulder blade.

Let me know how this works out for you.