✨𝑴𝑶𝑽𝑬𝑴𝑬𝑵𝑻 𝑴𝑶𝑵𝑫𝑨𝒀 !✨

Happy Monday, my beautiful, strong tribe. I am so grateful to be able to welcome you back again to another Movement Monday!

Last week, we wrapped up the lower body portion and today we are getting started on learning about the first part of the upper body portion, our back muscles.

So let's get this show on the road shall we!

Our back consists of over 15 muscles; but, I am only focusing on four of the major muscles including the Latissimus Dorsi, Trapezius, Levator Scapula, and Rhomboids.

Our Latissimus Dorsi, or Lats, is a large muscle that runs down both sides of our back starting from our Thoracic T7 and Lumbar L5 vertebrae and inserting at the intertubercular sulcus of our humerus aka the bone running from your shoulder to your elbow.

Another large muscle that takes up a good portion of our back is the Trapezius. The Traps consist of 3 muscles, the superior, inferior, and medial fibers. The Traps originate at the base of our cervical vertebrae (C7) and goes until the T12 or final Thoracic vertebrae. Finally, depending on which fiber it is, the Trapezius will insert at either the clavicle, acromion, and spine of the scapula.

When your traps are strained you can typically feel a pull at the base of the skull which can go as far as where a woman's bra strap would be.

Next, is our Levator Scapula which originates on the transverse process (outside part of cervical vertebrae) of the C1-C4 and inserts on the vertebrae side of the scapula or shoulder blade. Finally, we have our Rhomboids, we have two Rhomboids, the major and the minor. Our rhomboids act to stabilize our scapula, the major originates at the T2-T5, while the minor originates at our C7-T1. Both the major and the minor insert at the vertebrae side of the scapula.

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