Dr. Zac Morgan // #ClinicalTuesday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Spine Division leader Zac Morgan discusses assessing, treating, and loading the upper traps when suspecting their involvement in neck or headache symptoms. Take a listen or check out our full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog. If you're looking to learn more about our Lumbar Spine Management course, our Cervical Spine Management course, or our online physical therapy courses, check our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION INTRODUCTIONHey everybody, Alan here. Currently I have the pleasure of serving as their Chief Operating Officer here at ICE. Before we jump into today's episode of the PTI Nice Daily Show, let's give a shout out to our sponsor Jane, a clinic management software and EMR. Whether you're just starting to do your research or you've been contemplating switching your software for a while now, the Jane team understands that this process can feel intimidating. That's why their goal is to provide you with the onboarding resources you need to make your switch as smooth as possible. Jane offers personalized calls to set up your account, a free date import, and a variety of online resources to get you up and running quickly once you switch. And if you need a helping hand along the way, you'll have access to unlimited phone, email, and chat support included in your Jane subscription. If you're interested in learning more, you want to book a one-on-one demo, you can head on over to jane.app.switch. And if you decide to make the switch, don't forget to use the code ICEPT1MO at signup to receive a one-month free grace period on your new Jane account. ZAC MORGAN All right, good morning, PT on Ice Daily Show. I'm Dr. Zac Morgan, lead faculty in the spine division, teaching both cervical and lumbar spine management. And this morning I wanted to bring you all a technique Tuesday, looking at the upper trap, thinking more in that cervical management arena. So I think we all really appreciate that a lot of our patients with neck pain have some upper trap dysfunction. That's a very common muscle to have issues with, whether you're dealing with mechanical neck pain, Maybe you're dealing with cervicogenic headache patients, patients with TMD, temporal mandibular joint dysfunction. We see it a lot in our patients who have an irritated nerve root, something like a radiculopathy. They'll often hold some tension in that upper trap to kind of slacken their brachial plexus over time. Lastly, folks who are just really stressed out, which I think we all can kind of appreciate. That's most of our clientele. Most Americans carry around a ton of stress. I think all of these pathologies really lend themselves to quite a bit of tension in the upper trap. I wanted to talk this morning a little bit about actually like soft tissue assessment and kind of how to progress your vigor throughout that assessment to replicate those symptoms. But then I also wanted to just bleed that straight into treatment because they look quite similar and show you all some things that I find that are very useful for both identifying the symptoms and then eventually eradicating these symptoms doing some soft tissue work. So let's move to the table and we'll talk a little bit about the actual hands-on assessment of the upper trap and some key points to not miss. So we'll go ahead and shift gears over here. I do think having a little bit of soft tissue cream can be helpful when you're assessing the upper traps. So I like the company Deep Prep because Deep Prep is still, you can still get a grip on the muscle, but you get a little bit less friction, which is nice. There are plenty of soft tissue