Hi Dr. Baraki and Dr. Feigenbaum.
I’m a 19 year old male. At ages 12-14 I stopped pretty much all physical activity and spent time sitting at a computer or watching TV. During that time my height increased drastically while my back muscles couldn’t hold proper posture. General practitioner pointed me to orthopedics for an exam. I was diagnosed with hyper kyphosis and told that surgery was the only option (to really get it fixed), which I didn’t want to take. Meanwhile they signed me up for their group therapy which was basically hang upside down, burpees and touch your toes, and also said that spine is flexible until age of 18 and then it stiffens up forever. I’m uneducated on the topic, but that makes no sense. They gave me two (expensive by my countries standards) braces to wear which only gave me lower back pain. After a year of that making no difference I tried with private physical therapists and a chiropractor which gave me stretches to do that helped with tight and “short” spots, but my upper back curve is still the same. I feel like stretches don’t help me at all in terms of that.
Strength training has improved the situation a little bit, but while performing strengthening exercises (deadlifts, rows, back crunches or anything recommended on google) I can’t get my middle upper back muscles to contract nor did I ever fell soreness or any feeling at all in that curved area (like I do with for example bicep or hamstring curls). By my understanding those are small muscles that atrophied, but I have no idea how to target them.
I’m asking for a second opinion here because I tried with all “professionals” in my country.
Any advice would be really helpful, even which terms to research or mention to a PT.
ps: sorry for my english and a little rant about my country