Rhomboid muscle pain? Do these 2 easy exercises.

When I first started taking my training seriously, I set some ambitious goals for myself.

Get 10 strict pull ups with perfect form. Get a muscle up. Deadlift 1.5x my bodyweight.

But once I started making even a little progress, I would tweak my rhomboid muscle.

This kept happening for years until I had to take a hard look at what was going on with my rhomboids, back and whole body generally.

If you’re here, this story might resonate with you.

Whatever causes your rhomboid muscle to flare up, I will show you what to do about it in this article.

I will share the exact exercises that helped me overcome this pain pattern and I'll explain why it works.

Why do you have Rhomboid Muscle Pain?

A helpful way to think about pain patterns is breaking them down into two categories - acute and chronic.

Acute pain is typically a result of an injury. You fall down or twist your body in an awkward way.

These types of pain patterns require rest more than anything else. In the context of this article, a rhomboid muscle strain would fit more into this category.

Chronic pain on the other hand usually is not a result from some isolated injury or accident. It is more complicated than that.

It gradually gets worse in time and there is no clear correlation to some traumatic incident that causes the pain.

The most important intervention for chronic pain is education. You need to understand the role of the brain and nervous system in your pain pattern.

I always recommend people start with pain education. If you care about building a resilient body for the long-term, this is essential.

Pain is inevitable. As we age, things in our body are going to hurt. This is especially true if you enjoy fitness and staying active.

How you react and respond to new pain patterns will dictate the length and severity of those pain patterns.

If you have a foundation for pain education, you will understand what these sensations mean and what you need from exercise to feel better.

The physical stuff becomes much easier once the mental stuff is locked in.

Exercises for Rhomboid Muscle Pain

To reduce pain in this area of your body, you need to understand the action of the rhomboid muscle. The primary function of the rhomboid muscle is to retract the scapula so this is a good place to start.

But it is critical that you start with VERY low intensity. Part of the problem for most people is that they do too much, too soon.

You need to pick an exercise where it's easy for you to exaggerate the cue of retracting your shoulder blades. The first exercise I recommend are banded pull aparts.

Grab a light band and pull the band horizontally like I’m doing below. The goal here is to bring the shoulder blades together in a comfortable and pain-free way.

Don’t go into pain or discomfort. This will only aggravate the pain pattern you’re trying to alleviate. The way out of pain is to learn how to move without pain.

Once you become competent in the banded pull aparts, move on to an easy bodyweight row.

I’m using rings in my video demo but you can use TRX cables, a strong bar or whatever else you have access to.

The key is to bring what you learned in the banded pull aparts to your rows. It’s not to bang out a bunch of mindless reps. Keep it easy and exaggerate the retraction in the top position.

I recommend you hold at the top position for 2-3 seconds to really feel the rhomboids and other scapular retractors working.

As you get better at the movement, increase the angle to make it more challenging (bring your head closer to the ground).

Should you Stretch your Rhomboid Muscles?

I am not a big believer in passive stretching to get rid of pain. I don’t think this addresses the root of the problem which is poor movement and/or pain education.

But there is no denying that stretching feels good. It relaxes the nervous system and reduces tension in overactive muscles.

With this mind, I recommend you perform the side neck stretch below instead of trying to target the rhomboid muscles directly.

The neck, and the levator scapulae in particular, hold a ton of tension for most modern office-working adults. And the neck, shoulders, and spine are all interconnected.

What happens in one area of the body will affect another. Reduce tension in the neck and you will reap the benefits in the back, shoulders and other areas of the body.

Stretching relaxes and soothes the nervous system. A relaxed nervous system experiences less pain and discomfort than an overactive nervous system.

Closing Thoughts

To nip rhomboid muscle pain in the bud, you need to better understand why this sensation is showing up for you.

Not in a machinist way where you obsessively look for that one perfect “fix” to the problem but in a more holistic way where you slow down and listen to your body.

Is it a result of chronic tension? Or is it the way you move your body? Or are you training your back and shoulders with poor form?

The answer will be as different as the person reading this article. The exercises in this article may seem simple but done with the right intention, you can spend months if not years on them.

There is no shortage of exercises and resources out there these days but they are useless if you don’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.