What can I do about tight shoulders/traps?
I used to do rowing for four years (a lot of repeated load on my upper back because of my specific body type and the way I would pull) and even though it’s been a year since I stopped, I still feel residual tightness.
I used to feel the tension and knots most acutely doing long zone two workouts that my coach would attribute to stress, but it still hasn’t gone away. Currently, I lift a few times a week and when I do a particularly upper body heavy day, I’ll feel tightness the next morning. As a student, it gets really bad during exams when I have to hunch over for hours, straining my neck both during and the day after the test.
I’ve tried (very painful) massages where the masseuse had no mercy for the poor knots in my traps, at home shoulder massage contraptions, and rolling with a tennis ball. None of these have given me much relief, so I wonder if there is a way to train mobility and strengthen that area to alleviate pain and tension. For reference however, I do have fairly flexible shoulders. I can do the thing where I touch my hands behind my back with one elbow up and the other down and I can hold my arms how straight behind me, interlock my hands, and hold them past 90 degrees from my body.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙏 (concerning frequency of massages/rolling, types of exercises to train/avoid, etc.)
One more last note!: my shoulders pop when I reach my hands out interlocked and rotate them. My neck also always pops when I roll it back a half circle arc. If either of these points fail to make a pop sound, it usually indicates I’m extra tight that day…