Around mid-November something predictable happens to the people in my callanetics classes. The runners stop running outside as much. The cyclists swap the road for the trainer. The desk workers stop walking to lunch because it is dark and wet. And almost all of them start arriving to class rolling one shoulder, rubbing that spot between the shoulder blades, asking me the same question: Anelia, why does my upper back feel like a brick?
Welcome to desk season.
The cold months compress us. We hunch over keyboards, over phones, over steering wheels in traffic that never moves. Heating dries out tissues. Layers of clothing add weight on the shoulders. We sit longer because going outside is less appealing. And the rhomboids — those small but mighty muscles that hold your shoulder blades back against your ribcage — quietly start screaming.
This is the reset I do for myself between classes and the one I give to almost everyone who tells me their upper back hurts from November through March. Seven exercises. Two minutes a day. No equipment beyond a wall, the floor, and maybe a light resistance band if you have one.
Why Your Upper Back Hurts in Winter (Even If You're Active)
The pain between your shoulder blades is rarely from the rhomboids themselves. The rhomboids are usually the victims, not the criminals. They sit in a lengthened, overloaded position all day while your chest muscles get short and your serratus anterior — the muscle that wraps around your ribcage and helps the shoulder blade glide — basically goes to sleep.
When the serratus stops doing its job, the rhomboids and mid-traps try to compensate. They hold tension hour after hour. By 4pm, you feel that knot. By February, that knot has friends.
A few things make it worse in winter specifically:
- More sitting, less varied movement. Even runners I coach who do their long efforts get less incidental walking in winter.
- Cold shoulders, literally. Tissues that stay cold and tense lose pliability.
- Heavier clothes and bags. Backpacks, winter coats, scarves — extra load on the shoulder girdle.
- Phone scrolling on the sofa. Long evenings indoors mean more time with the head forward and down.
If you also deal with neck tension or notice the kids doing the same hunched scroll on the couch, my piece on tech neck in teens and tweens has more on the head-forward pattern — and yes, it applies to adults too.
The Two-Minute Daily Ritual: 7 Exercises
The goal here is not a workout. It is a reset. Frequency matters more than duration. I do this in the morning before class, sometimes again before bed in slippers and warm socks on the kitchen floor. My older son walks past me and says, "Mama, you look like a starfish." Yes. The starfish phase is important.
Do all seven in sequence, 8–10 reps each, with control. The whole sequence should take you under three minutes once you know it.
1. Wall Slides (warm-up the whole chain)
Stand with your back against a wall, feet about 15 cm away from the baseboard. Press your low back, mid-back, the back of your shoulders, the back of your hands and elbows against the wall. Yes — the back of your hands. This is hard. If you cannot keep them touching the wall, just get as close as you can.
Slowly slide your arms up the wall like you are making a snow angel, then back down. The mid-back should stay glued to the wall the whole time.
8 slow reps. This wakes up the lower traps and serratus and tells your rhomboids they have help on the way.
2. Scapular CARs (Controlled Articular Rotations)
Stand tall, arms relaxed at your sides. Slowly, like the second hand of a clock, move just your shoulder blades through their full range: up toward your ears, back and together, down toward your back pockets, then forward around your ribs to the front.
Five circles in each direction. Smooth, no shortcuts. Most people skip half the range without realizing it. This is the exercise that taught me how stuck my own scapulae were after long writing sessions.
3. Prone Y
Lie face down on a mat or carpet. Forehead resting on a folded towel. Arms overhead in a Y shape, thumbs pointing up.
Lift the arms about 5–10 cm off the floor by squeezing the area under and below your shoulder blades — not the upper traps near your neck. If your shoulders shrug up to your ears, you are using the wrong muscles. Lower with control.
8 reps. This is the lower trap exercise nobody likes and everyone needs.
4. Prone T
Same position, but now arms straight out to the sides like a T, thumbs up.
Lift, squeezing the shoulder blades together and down. Hold for one breath at the top. This is the direct rhomboid and mid-trap strengthener.
8 reps.
5. Banded Row (or Towel Row)
If you have a light resistance band, anchor it at chest height in a door. No band? A long bath towel looped around something sturdy works.
Sit or stand tall. Pull the band toward your lower ribs, elbows tracking close to your body. The key cue: initiate the pull from your shoulder blades, not your hands. Imagine sliding your shoulder blades down and back into your back pockets before your elbows move at all.
10 reps. Slow on the way back out.
6. Thoracic Rotation (Open Book)
Lie on your side, knees bent and stacked, arms stretched out in front of you at shoulder height, palms together. Slowly lift the top arm and rotate it across your body to open the chest toward the ceiling. Follow your hand with your eyes. The knees stay stacked — only the upper body rotates.
5 per side. Breathe out as you open.
This one is my non-negotiable. If I had to pick one exercise from the whole list to keep, it would be this. The thoracic spine is supposed to rotate. After a desk day, it forgets.
7. Doorway Pec Stretch
Stand in a doorway, forearm against the frame, elbow at about 90 degrees and just below shoulder height. Step the same-side foot forward and gently lean through until you feel a stretch across the front of the chest and shoulder.
Hold 30 seconds per side.
You cannot pull the shoulder blades back if the front of the chest is locked short. This finishes the reset.
Where to Do It (and Why That Matters More Than You Think)
The biggest reason people abandon a routine like this is friction. If you have to change clothes, find equipment, clear a space — it will not happen on a busy Tuesday in January.
I do mine on a yoga mat next to the radiator. I wear whatever I am wearing — usually loose clothes for callanetics, sometimes pajamas, almost always our HYKLE Slippers because the wood floor in our apartment gets cold and Deso refuses to turn the heat higher than 20°C. Engineers.
The point: make it the lowest-effort thing in your day. If your shoulders feel locked at the desk at 2pm, you should be able to stand up and do at least three of these (wall slides, scapular CARs, doorway stretch) in your office clothes without anyone noticing.
What to Add If You Sit Most of the Day
Two more things that help, if you sit more than four hours daily:
1. A standing reset every 45 minutes. Not a long walk — just stand, do five scapular CARs, sit back down. The rhomboids hate sustained positions more than they hate work.
2. Some lumbar support that does not let you collapse. If you have a history of low back issues alongside the upper back stuff (very common — the spine works as one unit), something like the HYKLE SpineFlex Posture Corrector used for short stretches during the workday can be a useful reminder for the shoulders to drop back. I would not wear it all day — your muscles need to do their own work — but as a 20-minute cue while you finish a focused task, it can help break the slump pattern.
Nathan, one of our customers, put it well: "It provides excellent lumbar support, which helps reduce strain during long hours of sitting." That is the right use case — strain reduction during the worst-offender hours, not a permanent crutch.
When Shoulder Blade Pain Is Not Just Desk Stiffness
Most rhomboid pain is mechanical and responds beautifully to the seven exercises above within two to three weeks of daily practice. But not all of it. See someone in person if:
- The pain wakes you at night and is not relieved by changing position
- You feel numbness, tingling or weakness down the arm
- There is sharp pain with deep breathing
- The pain came on suddenly without any clear cause and is not improving
- You have a history of breast, lung or thoracic surgery and the pattern feels new
For the rest — the regular winter-desk-tight-shoulders crowd — this is treatable at home.
The Honest Timeline
I tell my callanetics students the same thing every January. You will feel a little looser after the first session. You will notice the difference in your desk posture within a week. The actual structural shift — where you stop having to think about the exercises because your shoulder blades have remembered where to live — takes about four to six weeks of near-daily practice.
That is not a discouraging timeline. That is just how muscles relearn patterns they have forgotten for a decade of desk work.
Two minutes a day. Seven exercises. Through the dark months. By the time the trails dry out in spring and you are ready to be outside again, your upper back will be a different upper back.
And if you are reading this because someone you love is the one rubbing their shoulders every evening — a parent, a partner, the office worker in the family — share the routine. It costs nothing. It needs no equipment. And it works.
If lower back tightness is also part of your picture, the companion piece on lifting and moving through the holidays with a bad back covers the rest of the spine. The whole back is one system. Treat it that way.