Dr. Clayton Roach: Here’s another excellent mobility set of exercises. You can do this to help bring your shoulders into the proper position. Throughout the day, we get into improper postures. They propagate that ugly internally rotated forward head posture where we almost look like Tyrannosaurus Rex, right? And we’re going like this because we’re in our position at work, working eight hours a day like this. We could apply this set of exercises to a truck driver or somebody who’s at the desk all day long.
One of the things that this leads to, and I’m starting to see this with young kids, 10, 11, 12 years old, is that they start to lose that beautiful curve they’re supposed to have in the neck. That curve is supposed to measure 42 degrees. When you start losing that, it is almost impossible to bring yourself back, even though you try. And what happens next is you end up with that hump on the back of your neck. There’s probably one of the best three exercises you can do to activate the muscles in the back that will get your shoulders opened up so that you can knock it out of the park by fixing your posture finally, once and for all.
The first one you’re going to do is you’re going to do YTW’s face down. So all you need for this is a ground. You’re going to get down on the basis. You’ll put your thumbs above your head, your head facing the floor, and you’ll do pulses. So all that means is you will do ten repetitions of pulses. Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. You’re going to do ten repetitions. The next one is you’re going to go about 45 degrees, and you’re going to do the same thing.
Pulses up, down, up, down ten repetitions, and then you’re going to go another 45 degrees so that your arms are outright like a T, and you’re going to bring them up like this. Doing ten repetitions. So this is the first step. The next one you’re going to do is you’re going to put your arms behind your head while on the ground. So here it is, components out like this. What you’re going to do is you’re going to bring your elbows up, and you’re going to contract your shoulder blades together. I’m feeling a burn right between my shoulder blades.
You’re going to do this ten times. If you don’t feel the burn, you’re probably not doing it well. And then the next one is going to be forehead to W’s. And what that means is you’re going to interlace your hands together underneath your forehead, and you’re going to bring your arms to the side and then bring your shoulder blades together. Back underneath the forehead to the side, bring the shoulder blades together and repeat this ten times. So we’ve got to review the pulses. The second one was the arm behind the head, raising the elbows.
We have three beautiful exercises you will do, ten repetitions of each. I recommend you do this routine once to twice a day for the ambitious folks. Twice a day would be great, at least once, because we have to remind our body that we’re only in this position to work and remind the muscles that they’re supposed to be here. And we’re only there to work. We won’t be there forever and look like the ones hunched forward. This is a great way to kill that ugly posture and get yourself back up. You may gain a few inches of height as well. Take care. Enjoy.
