Before I get into some exercises you can do to alleviate neck pain and build stronger, bulletproof neck, let’s talk about some lifestyle changes you can make, as well.

Whether your neck pain stems from a car accident or other acute injury, a lifetime of bad posture, sleeping on your stomach with a giant pillow, or sitting at a computer with your head tilted forward for hours each day, in my 10 years of coaching I have discovered neck pain is a common complaint.

Before I get into some exercises you can do to alleviate neck pain and build stronger, bulletproof neck, let’s talk about some lifestyle changes you can make, as well.

1. Rethink Your Pillow: You might love that big, poofy pillow of yours, but the reality is it’s probably stopping you from sleeping with a neutral spine and neck, which could be causing you neck pain. A thinner pillow that supports your neck’s natural curve is a better bet, especially if you’re a stomach sleeper (or an orthopedic pillow that has a deeper depression to place and support your head and neck). Also, consider sleeping on your back. All the experts say it’s the best position for your spine.
2. Rethink Your Laptop Position: It’s probably not something you think about too much, but if you spend a lot of time at a computer, it’s a good idea to position it at eye level, so you’re not spending hours looking down or up, which can place undue stress on the neck.
3. Rethink Your Texting Position: You might look silly holding your phone higher than everyone else, but the same is true of your phone when you’re scrolling. Looking down and logging hours upon hours scrolling those social media feeds could be taking a toll on your neck.
4. Consider a Supplement: Magnesium is commonly used as a sleeping aid, and it’s also a great muscle relaxant. If you find your neck, and the muscles around your neck, perpetually tight or tense, consider adding a magnesium supplement to your nightly routine.
5. Hydration: Drinking enough water is important to keep you hydrated, and also to keep the discs of your spine hydrated. Hydrated discs help keep them strong and pliable.

Okay, now on to five exercises you can do at home or at the gym to help improve your neck health.

1. Straight Jacket Sit

Bad posture is one of the most common reasons for neck problems. A straight jacket sit is a great way to practice having perfect posture, which can essentially help re-program your bad posture. It will also tell you where you’re weak, as people tend to feel the weakest part of their body break down the fastest during a straight jacket sit.

Sit with your legs stretched out straight, hip-width apart, and your back, spine, and head perfectly neutral. Pull your shoulder blades together and down and tighten your thighs. Dorsi-flex your feet by pulling your toes toward you.

Then cross your arms and gently place your thumbs and pointer fingers on the opposite shoulder. From there, simply sit and maintain this perfect position for 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, etc.

Can you work up to five minutes without breaking form? Where do you feel it first? Your low back? Your neck?

It helps to have a coach present to watch so he/she can correct you if you start to lose that perfect position.

2. Feet-Planted Deadhang Hold

Stand on a box at a height where you can easily reach the bar above you. Grab onto the bar with your body directly underneath the bar. Then bend your knees and sink your weight into the box as if you’re trying to let all your weight sink into the box.

You should feel a good stretch and release all throughout your neck and back, helping release any tightness running through your spine.

Hang out for 1 minute at the end of a training session.

3. Cat-Cow

The cat-cow is a classic yoga pose that gently moves your body from spinal flexion to spinal extension, all the while helping you gain control and postural awareness over the movement of your spine.

On all fours, focus on controlling your movements and moving one vertebra at a time until you’re at your max spinal flexion. Then take a couple of deep breaths and see if you can push the range of motion a little further. Then, starting at the lower back again, move in the opposite direction, one vertebra at a time, until you’re at your max spinal extension. When you do this, keep your head neutral the entire time, especially if you have neck pain.

Spend 2 minutes working the cat-cow positions in your warm-up.

4. Prone Plate Neck Raises

If you experience neck pain doing this, then abort this exercise for now. But if your neck is healthy and you’re looking to strengthen it, this is a good one for you.

Lay prone (face down) on a bench, with your head and neck hanging off the bench. Place a 5lb plate behind your head, holding onto it with both hands, and slowly lower and raise your neck through a comfortable range of motion.

Keep that plate right against the back of your head as you move your neck by dropping your chin and raising your head. Keep a nice, slow tempo on these. No sudden movements.

Do 10-20 of these at the end of your workout.

5. Supine Plate Neck Raises

This is essentially the opposite of the above. Lay on your back on the bench and place the plate on your forehead and then raise your neck as high as you can by tucking your chin to your chest, and then return to a neutral position.

Again, if you experience pain, do not do this one.

Do 10-20 of these at the end of your workout.

Good luck turning your neck into a strong, stable, bulletproofed one!

The post 5 Exercises to a Bulletproof Neck appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I would argue that the front squat provides:

• Great gains in various areas including posture, glute activation, and huge quads.
• Better crossover into real life and athletic endeavors.
• It is often a whole lot safer.

Let’s face it, it is a hell of a lot easier for the average gym goer to do the usual leg press, leg curl, leg extension, smith machine squat—and my favorite, the half-assed, half-rep back squat for their Facebook or Insta account—than it is to get under a heavy front squat.

The front squat allows the lifter to go much deeper (so there goes your half rep back squat bragging rights), but this, in turn, allows better glute activation due to the depth, The front squat requires considerable postural and core strength to stay more upright. There is also that pesky rack position which most people simply do not understand, and as a result, they think they have a wrist or mobility restriction. Most of the time people just don’t have the technique right. And because the bar usually sits up against the throat a little, it can be uncomfortable. So, unfortunately, front squats often get thrown in the “too hard” basket.

So what variations of the front squat are there? What is a great way to progress to one? And if you don’t want to do a front squat with a barbell in the rack position and wanted the same benefits, what could you do instead?

Well, I am glad you asked.

Regain Your Resting Body Weight Squat

As human beings, we learned how to squat from a very young age—and usually from the bottom up as part of our developmental patterns. Children often spend lots of time in this position and as a species, we spent a lot of time shooting the breeze hanging around fires and making things here, too.

Many grown adults have lost the ability to do something that they could do as children. We stopped moving, started sitting on chairs and toilets, and lost a fundamental movement pattern. The reality is many of us, due to our sedentary lifestyle, have lost the ability to squat well, so the first step to me in learning any loaded squat is to regain a relaxed flat foot squat that we could do as a child.

In many countries, people still go to the toilet and spend long periods of time resting in this position. It is often called the third world country squat for this reason. I remember on a trip to Vietnam a few years ago, an elderly lady was waiting for a train alongside us for an hour or so.

If we cannot rest comfortably and breathe easily in this position, for at least a few minutes, then we probably haven’t yet earned the right to squat with load under a bar yet. If you can get to this step and can relax, then congrats, you’ve reclaimed the movement you had a kid. Isn’t that cool?

Work on Your Thoracic and Ankle Mobility

Two areas that should be mobile, but often are not, are your thoracic spine and your ankles. When it comes to the front squat or squatting in general, in my humble opinion most people struggle more with ankle mobility (and more specifically with dorsiflexion) than they do with hip mobility. The ankles and feet get no love, and we take what they do for granted.

With modern footwear often taking the need for our feet and ankles to functional optimally out of the picture by doing all the work for us, and doing all sorts of nasty things to our feet and toes, it is often a surprise for many to learn how bad their feet and ankles are when it comes to mobility, especially as they get older.

Combine this with one of most common injuries being inversion sprains of the ankle, then the ankle joint often has very little of the 3.5-4 inches of ankle dorsiflexion that it should. If you are struggling with an ankle ROM challenge, then all you have to do is Google or YouTube ankle dorsiflexion or ankle mobility to find a vast amount of material on this.

Another prerequisite for the front squat is that the torso needs to stay very upright on the lift. This great for lower back health compared to the back squat which often is more a lower back exercise, and often why it is prescribed to athletes that require a thick back like rugby league and union players.

As a result of this upright positioning, many struggle with the thoracic mobility required to do so. Tight lats play a huge role in making the front rack position harder than it needs to be with keeping the upper arm parallel to the ground and the elbows high, so look for any thoracic extension, lat mobility, and thoracic mobility material that will help you stay upright.

Learn How to Goblet Squat

Popularized by Master RKC Dan John, proficiency with the goblet squat should be obtained before progressing on to pretty much any other squat progression; it is that good. Whether it is holding onto a medball, dumbbell, kettlebell, or whatever you have lying around, learning how to goblet squat well, like they are taught on an HKC or RKC certification, should be your next go to.

The goblet squat will start to teach the body to remain upright while holding a weight in front of the body up around the chest connected to the sternum and midsection so it starts to mimic the same movement pattern and requirements of a good barbell front squat. Sometimes chocking the heels up on some weight plates will help the pattern by giving added ankle dorsiflexion or a band around the knees to engage the glutes and hips properly may also help make your goblet squat awesome.

Learn Variations of the Kettlebell Front Squat

The next step in working to your barbell front squat or taking your kettlebell practice to the next level is with the kettlebell front or rack squat, held in one hand (which can sometimes be supported by the other hand).

Yes, this is an asymmetrically loaded squat that really starts to test keeping the elbow up and thoracic spine upright in the squat as you rest the kettlebell in the “v” between your chest, forearm, and bicep—and is a more challenging version than the goblet squat from a positioning perspective. Add another kettlebell to the picture and you have the double kettlebell front squat—a staple of double kettlebell lifting and probably the best way of getting someone strong with two bells.

With the kettlebells in the rack position connected to the body (and up high), it really emphasizes the quads and tends to force you to lean back to counteract the weight, keeping you more upright. I would argue that in many ways this is much harder and often feels heavier than its barbell cousin with the same weight. Don’t take my word for it. Grab two 32kg or two 36kg kettlebells and squat them for reps. It is the master of kettlebell grinds and an essential exercise to master for any double kettlebell work.

Learn the Zombie Squat

When I first saw the Frankenstein squat, the name didn’t resonate so much to me. It looked more like a zombie from The Walking Dead or Night of the Living Dead with the arms outstretched. This variation of the front squat utilizes the bar only, resting on the upper chest/shoulders and up against the throat as the regular front squat will, so it’s an awesome variation for building confidence and getting used the bar up against the throat.

It helps to continue to develop the understanding for the position of both arms in relation to the floor and if the chest pitches forward and/or the elbows drop too low, descending into the squat, the barbell will roll off the arms and drop to the ground. So it is a great place to start with the barbell.

Learn the Front Squat Properly

Finally, to the front squat. By now with the previous progressions, you already have plenty of squatting practice. You have the prerequisite mobility and stability and have a great squat pattern going. You are acutely aware of how important the positioning of the upper arms and the torso are, particularly at the bottom of the squat as to not drop the bar. You’ve also done some zombie squats so you are also comfortable with the bar on your throat.

The last piece of the puzzle is the rack position. This position is always the bain for most beginner lifters who often feel that their elbows and wrists are going to snap under the load. The reason is simple—they often don’t understand the position. While some people may genuinely have some limitations and restrictions doing this lift, if you have 90 degrees of extension in the wrist, just like in a push-up, then you are good to go.

Some of the key points with the rack position are:

• Make sure the bar is racked about an inch or two below the clavicles while standing for safe racking and un-racking.
• Keep the elbows up and in, wrists out.
• Don’t grab or fully grip the bar. Yep, you read correctly, this is the biggest flaw. The bar is rested/hooked on the fingertips.
• Bar up against the throat, upper chest, and shoulders.

The Zercher Squat

As a bonus, I had to mention the Zercher squat in this article as a barbell alternative, simply because it is my favorite squat with a barbell, and it usually has me feeling like I can walk through walls afterward. This variation is done with a barbell in the crook of the elbows, palms facing you like a bicep curl. Initially, it can be uncomfortable with the bar in the elbows, but this is easily remedied with a pair of fat grips, a towel, or some foam.

The Zercher squat can be an amazing alternative for those with shoulder issues or genuine wrist restrictions. The added bonus is that with the bar further out in front of you, the more core and posture control you need to maintain in order for you not to fall flat on your face. It teaches you to compress the abdomen and sit between your legs.

Because the bar placement is closer to the floor and further from the body, more recruitment of the hip and lower back musculature is required than that of two kettlebells. So, the Zercher, in fact, can often be a substitute for both the barbell back and front squat.

Get Front Squatting

As the saying often goes, “if it was easy everyone would be doing it,” but sometimes it’s only “not easy” for us because we simply don’t understand how to do things. And as a result, we underestimate the value.

Don’t fear the front squat in its various forms. If your goal is to move well, improve your core and posture, and get strong, this may be the best exercise you are not doing at the moment. There is a front squat for almost everybody.

The post Front and Center: The Best Exercise You Are Not Doing appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Upper Cross Syndrome (UCS) is initially seen as a forward head posture with rounded shoulders, even while attempting to stand tall. Before you WebMD yourself crazy, let me shed some more light on this particular posture predicament.

This less than ideal head position stems from poor sitting posture, over/under-active muscles, previous injury, bad movement habits, and ultimately, results in a muscular imbalance between the front (anterior) and back (posterior) musculature of the upper body, becoming either short and tight or weak and long.

• Short and tight: Back of the neck (suboccipital), chest muscles (pectoralis minor), Rotator cuff (subscapularis), and front of the neck and chest (scalenes)
• Weak and long: Upper shoulders (trapezius/traps), mid-back between your shoulder blades (rhomboids), and upper spine rotators/stabilizers (deep cervical flexors and extensors)

Before moving on, the cervical muscles are most pertinent to correct, because they are most responsible for all of your potential head movement, both on intentionally and our of reaction. Which, by the way, your head weighs about 7 pounds so it would be in your best interest to make sure the muscles keeping it supported are up to the task!

What Does This Look Like?

The three most prominent postural symptoms of Upper Cross Syndrome are:

• Forward head posture
• Hunched back
• Forward rounded shoulders

Forward rounded shoulders (internally rotated) lead to a roundness of the upper back (kyphosis). Once the upper spine (cervical vertebrae) are exposed to prolonged tension in the wrong structural position, or out of ideal alignment, gravity packs a punch in pressing your head forward and down to follow where the rest of your spine is directed. Over time, this is what leads to a hunch back and a host of other shoulder/neck related injuries.

When your chest (pectoral) and neck (cervical) muscles become overworked and tight, it causes significant postural changes to occur because the muscles actually shorten in length; not permanently, but the longer it occurs, the more difficult it becomes to counteract. When the shoulders are rounded forward, the shoulder blades (scapulas) are pulled up and away from their ideal position.

Postural changes often cause a significant shift in the position and angle of the shoulder joint. If the joint is out of place, it cannot move properly. If the joint cannot move properly, you will lose out on potential strength, mobility, and in time it can lead to very serious injuries anywhere from your nose to your toes.

Your level of priority to assess, review, and reverse postural issues should be high. You won’t explode from UCS, but if unresolved, be ready for a host of chronic stress and overuse injuries. I won’t dive into those here because it is out of my professional scope of practice, but let that be enough of a kick in the butt to get checked by a professional.

Self Analysis: Do I Have UCS?

Find a perfectly vertical line. This can be a door frame, broomstick, piece of tape, basketball hoop pole; anything that you can stand next to and set up a camera (or have a helping hand). I personally use video, that way you can just pause and then screenshot the frames that matter (it is much easier than having to take one picture, go check how it came out, try again, etc).

Once the camera is set, take 3-5 full and deep cycles of breath to relax into a natural, resting standing posture. Don’t try and do anything fancy here, just simply stand like you would while in line at the DMV—we all have some great practice in that hell hole of a building. Luckily, I am spoiled and happen to have an align-mat handy (and decided to tape it to the wall). Your shot should appear like this:

Although my posture is not “perfect”, whatever that means, I would deem myself not having the symptoms of Upper Cross Syndrome. However, what I do see is a slight forward round in my shoulders, and a forward (anterior) tilted pelvis. Now that I can see it, I can take the necessary steps in correcting this imbalance. A picture can tell you a thousand words, but if you pay attention to the few words that matter, then you can begin to make big lifestyle changes.

Prevent UCS in Your Future

Let’s face it, your cell phone and sedentary activities are not going to disappear anytime soon. Luckily, there are many ways to strategically strengthen the muscles responsible for restoring ideal posture, as well as release tension from the others.

I recommend seeking a qualified physical/physiotherapist to properly diagnose UCS. Otherwise, a combination of specific strength, stretch, and myofascial release tools can definitely pave the way towards a more comfortable and optimal tomorrow.

The post Avoiding the Rounded Shoulder Chain of Pain appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Let’s start by tackling three common myths about this beast we call posture.

There’s No Such Thing

That thing you call posture? Well, it doesn’t really exist—at least not the way you think it does. See, there’s no static position that is inherently good or bad. That perfect posture you’ve been chasing is going to continue to elude you because it isn’t real.

Our ideas of perfect posture are based on the outdated, cadaver-oriented view of anatomical neutral. We seem to think that if we stack our bony bits one on top of the other, then we’ll balance perfectly within the gravitational field. But it just can’t happen that way. What the biomechanical model misses is the fact that your body is constantly in motion. You aren’t made of muscles and bones. You’re made of cells. And you better believe they are constantly shifting position in response to the forces at work around them.

Your Posture Doesn’t Matter

It sounds good in theory, right? Poor posture must lead to poor movement. But posture is just a shape you put your body in. And the shapes you put your body in are only bad if you lack the ability to change those shapes. By all means, tip your pelvis and hunch your shoulders, but only if you can actively un-tip that pelvis and un-hunch your shoulders.

As long as you can still maintain voluntary control over those body parts, it really doesn’t matter what position you put them in. We run into trouble when we lose the ability to move those body parts. That’s what makes “bad posture” bad.

Posture Isn’t Fixed Consciously

Tuck your chin. Shoulders down and back. Stack your ribs. Flat back. What happens when you stop thinking about fixing each of these cues? If you have to constantly think about correcting your posture, you’re missing the point.

Consider how laughable it would be for any other animal to double-check its alignment before, during, and after physical activity.

The thing you call posture is shaped by a tremendous number of forces, from your mobility and neuromuscular tonus, to your social and emotional health. Thinking that a few corrective exercises will fix it is short-sighted and myopic. If you want to improve your quality of movement, if you want to find more ease in your body, then it’s time to start moving—and living—like a human animal again.

Trust your body to handle itself:

You Aren’t as Fragile as You Think

The post Your Posture Isn’t the Problem appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

You and Gravity, Sitting in a Tree

Many trainers and therapists still hold to a notion of posture as a series of blocks stacked one on top of the other. The thought is that if we just put the bones one on top of the other, then logically we have good posture. And sure, sometimes those pesky muscles won’t cooperate. They’re too tight, so they just need to be foam rolled and stretched. Surely then we can just choose to stand up tall, right?

Nope.

Your bones exist to manage compressive force, the ever-present downward pull of gravity. Without bones, you’d be a pile of meat on the floor. Your muscles, tendons, and ligaments are great, but they aren’t there to manage gravity. What they are there for is to produce force and move the bony bits relative to each other in space. Of course, the nervous system governs this leverage, which brings us back to the idea of “choosing” better posture.

Your relationship to gravity is just like any other: if you have to constantly think about it for fear of it falling apart, it’s not healthy. This is where postural autopilot comes in.

After a hard effort, does your postural autopilot take over?

Postural Autopilot

When things are working smoothly, you don’t have to second-guess this relationship every second of the day. Your nervous system and musculoskeletal system have a constant dialogue that adjusts itself to new situations and contexts. The way it does this is largely under the surface. It’s built on reflexive patterns you’ve accumulated over decades of dancing with gravity.

By and large, this neural governance is habitual, not something we consciously think about. It’s the summation of a lifetime of equilibrium responses, reactions to trauma (physical and emotional), environmental constraints, and the like. All of these factors influence the way our body organizes for posture.

Saying we can “choose” posture vastly oversimplifies the complex interactions between these various factors.

Posture and the Brain

If you want to own and improve your posture and alignment, you need to harness your nervous system. This can not only change your body’s function – it can change the body’s structure, as well.

Let’s explore a broad application of the SAID principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) to make some sense of this. In general, we take our form from the forces acting upon us. Just like river beds erode as water flows past them, we gain or lose physiological adaptations based on our environment and behaviors.

Structure, as we know it in an anatomical sense, is the summation of past forces on our form at this present moment. If you add a force of significant intensity (for example, traumatic impact from a car accident) or duration (chronic tension, muscular or otherwise), then you will have a change in apparent structure.

So What Can We Do?

The natural question then is: if we can’t really choose a better posture, do we just give up?

Come on, now. I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that.

What we need to do is take an active role in the forces we put on the body. We can choose to avoid sitting for twelve hours a day. We can choose to spend time relieving stress, be it through time in nature, exploring natural movement in natural environments, or meditation, getting in touch with our bodies’ cues again. No matter the situation, we have a choice and a responsibility.

It’s also crucial to explore your habitual responses to familiar positions. Remember, a lot of posture goes on beneath the surface. When you stand or sit, how do you naturally organize? When you think of “good posture,” what is your body’s inherent response? Try this simple thought exercise to give your posture some new life:

Stand With Purpose

If the nervous system governs muscular tension over periods of months, years, and longer, it also contributes to musculoskeletal alignment, for better or for worse. This goes way deeper than simply choosing to stand up tall.

As we’ve talked about before, variety is crucial to healthy nervous system function, and therefore your posture. Put yourself in novel environments, or simply approach the mundane with a new perspective, and you’ll notice far more improvement in your posture than you would by simply stacking piles of bones one on top of the other.

More Points About Posture:

• Destroy Pain and Physical Limitation With Posture Alignment Therapy
• How to Unlock Your Athletic Potential Through Good Posture
• Straightening Up: Progressive Posture Alignment
• New on Breaking Muscle Right Now

Photo courtesy of Jeff Nguyen/CrossFit Empirical.

The post Is Posture a Choice? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The exercises included in this article will activate key posture muscles and restore muscle function to the hips, spine, and shoulders. These exercises are intended to change your posture alignment, which will in turn reduce symptoms of pain in different parts of the body. They don’t just treat the symptoms, they correct posture. 

When we sit, our hips roll back into flexion. This leads to a loss of natural lumbar curve, which often leads to back pain. In the exercise instructions included in this article you will notice cues to relax your stomach. In order to restore the natural curve of the lower back, it is important that the abdominal muscles relax, and that the pelvis re-learns how to tilt forward into extension. Maintaining tension in the abdominal muscles prevents this forward movement of the pelvis and restricts natural breathing.

Keep in mind that these exercises are not for everybody. All postures are different. If any of the exercises included in this article cause pain, then discontinue those exercises immediately. Listen to your body, and only do what feels right to you.

Alignment Exercises for Better Sitting: Knee Pillow Squeezes

This exercise introduces the body to the functional sitting position, versus the average slumped-forward position our bodies have become accustomed to. As the name implies, this exercise targets the adductor muscle group of the hips.

Instructions: 

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Place a block or foam roller between your knees.
3. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back. Hold this position throughout the exercise.
4. Squeeze and release the block/foam roller with your knees.
5. Repeat for 3 sets of 20. Be sure to keep your stomach relaxed for the duration of the exercise.

Alignment Exercises for Better Sitting: Abductor Presses

Just like sitting knee pillow squeezes, this exercise introduces the body to the functional sitting position. The hip abductor muscle group goes to sleep when we sit. This exercise will force them to wake up.

Instructions: 

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Place a strap around your knees.
3. Roll your pelvis forward to place a small arch in your low back. Hold this position throughout the exercise.
4. Press outward against the strap, then release.
5. Repeat for 3 sets of 20. Be sure to keep your stomach relaxed for the duration of the exercise.

Relax the Shoulders Into Alignment: Floor Block

This exercise actively targets the muscles that stabilize the shoulder. Be sure to keep your glute muscles relaxed and allow your ankles to drop out to the sides for the duration of the exercise.

Instructions: 

1. Lie on your stomach with your forehead and nose flat on the floor. The tops of your feet should be on the floor, with your big toes touching and your heels dropped out to the sides.
2. Place your forearms on 6-inch blocks directly above your shoulders.
3. Lock your elbows and point your thumbs to the ceiling.
4. Curl your fingers into the golfer’s grip position by curling your fingers to your first knuckle so that your entire palm is open. Rotate your thumbs away from each other, with the movement coming from your shoulders.
5. Hold this position for 1 minute or until you feel your upper back relax.

For the second position, keep your arms on the blocks and slide the blocks out to a 45-degree angle, rotate your shoulders outward and hold for 1 minute, or until you feel your upper back relax.

For the last position, slide your arms and blocks out to a 90-degree angle, rotate your shoulders outward, and hold for 1 minute or until you feel your upper back relax.

Note on the height of the blocks: If you use 6-inch blocks and you either feel like you have a hard time keeping your hips relaxed during this exercise, or you are not able to rotate from the shoulder joint, this is an indicator the blocks are too high. Start with 2-inch blocks, and work your way up to 6-inches. More is not better here. The goal is to allow your body to change, so be sure to choose a block height that works for you.

Relax the Shoulders Into Alignment: Modified Floor Block

This exercise is a counter to the typical typing position. It works by opening up the chest and shoulders and also promoting pelvic and lumbar extension.

You will not necessarily feel a big stretch with this exercise. The magic ingredient here is that it is a low-demand, longer-duration exercise. It is a long, passive release which will allow for changes that cannot happen with exercises that are shorter and more active.

Instructions: 

1. Lie on your stomach with your forehead on the floor. Your feet should be pigeon-toed and your buttocks relaxed.
2. Elevate your bent arms 4-9 inches by placing your forearms and elbows on blocks. Breathe and relax your upper body.
3. Hold for 6 minutes. Do not press your arms into the blocks. If this hurts your shoulders, lower the height on the blocks. Let your stomach and chest fall into the floor, causing your hips to tilt forward naturally.

If you feel like your nose is getting squished into the floor, place a folded towel under your forehead. It is important that you are comfortable and able to relax into this position.

Hip Exercises With Modified Floor Block

These exercises activate the glutes and the rotators of the hip while promoting extension of the thoracic spine. They also correct internally rotated femurs and valgus knees (knees that cave in) by providing lateral hip stability and strength. Modified Floor Block variations are great for people who struggle with glute activation during squats and other lower body exercises.

Hip Exercises With Modified Floor Block: Modified Floor Block Ankle Squeezes

Instructions: 

1. While in the Modified Floor Block position, place a block between your ankles/feet.
2. Bend both knees to about 90 degrees and flex your toes down toward the floor.
3. Press and release your ankles/feet into the block. Be sure to press through the balls of the feet and the heels.
4. Repeat for 3 sets of 20. Be sure to keep your upper body relaxed for the duration of the exercise. It may be necessary to spread your knees apart a bit to feel the contraction in your hips.

Hip Exercises With Modified Floor Block: Modified Floor Block Abductor Presses

Instructions: 

1. While in the Modified Floor Block position, place a strap around your ankles.
2. Bend both knees to about 90 degrees and flex your toes down toward the floor.
3. Pull your ankles/feet outward against the strap and then release.
4. Repeat for 3 sets of 20. Be sure to keep your upper body relaxed for the duration of the exercise.

Hip Exercises With Modified Floor Block: Alignment Before Movement

We’re always told to “just get out of the chair and move,” and that’s great advice. You need to be proactive about your health and incorporate more movement in your day-to-day life. 

But remember, taking your body from sitting all the time to moving with abandon is reckless. It’s like jumping in a car that is badly in need of an alignment, and driving it as fast as it will go down the freeway. Prevent unnecessary wear and tear and prolong the life of your vehicle (your body) by using these exercises to straighten out before you get moving.

More Alignment Correction From Coach Maryann:

• Banish Pain Permanently: 3 Self-Assessment Tools
• Straighten, Then Strengthen: A Pre-Workout Movement Menu
• Cell Phone Ergonomics: How to Avoid the “Smart Phone Slump”
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Teaser photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Take a look at this picture. I’m sure many of you recognize it as a stance you adopt frequently – on a water break at the gym, while holding your kids, or simply after standing a long period of time. Physical therapists look out for this posture when we are assessing someone for back, hip, knee, and pretty much all other types of pain.

You might just be standing around, but your hips and spine are in peril.

All Bone, No Muscle

Let me put it in perspective for you. You know how when your friend is standing tall, you can sometimes hit the back of their knee and it buckles? And then it takes them a moment before they catch themselves from falling?

If you manage a successful takedown, it is because your friend has locked out the knee joint and is resting simply on ligaments and bone. In other words, he or she is not using any active muscular control at the knee joint. This is why the knee buckles and why it takes a second before the muscular control kicks in to prevent a fall. The same thing happens when you hang on your hip. Instead of using your muscles, you rely on the ligaments, hip capsule, and bones to support your body weight.

Who Is at Risk?

It’s all too easy for anyone to get in the habit of standing like this, especially people who stand for long periods of time. It does tend to be more common with females, and it is almost always to the same side.

One of the biggest populations I see fall into this trap is parents, especially new parents. They often lock out at the hip joint in order to hold their child for longer of periods of time without having to use active muscle control. Law enforcement or correctional workers also seem to assume this position frequently. This is because they typically wear a heavy belt that is also asymmetrical, with one side weighing quite a bit more than the other.

Consequences of Hanging on One Hip

The problem with hanging on one hip in this adducted stance (also known as the Trendelenburg gait) are numerous and significant. They include knee pain and arthritis, hip joint dysfunction, gluteus medius tendinopathy, low back pain and nerve impingement, muscle strains, and of course all of the compensations that occur with each of these injuries. Let’s look at some of these issues in more detail.

• Lumbar Spine: Active hip control is lost in this position, and the glutes and pelvic floor muscles become inhibited. This leads to increased loading of the medial knee (a huge contributor to arthritis) and compensation by the lumbar spine. This compensation can cause over-activity of the lateral stabilizers of the spine, as well as decreased space between the nerve roots in the vertebrae. Ultimately, these effects can lead to impingement.

• Gluteus Medius: This position increases loading on the IT band over the greater trochanter (the outside of your lateral hip). This is important because one of your glute muscles, the gluteus medius, inserts on the greater trochanter. The increased load causes compression on this tendon, which has been found to lead to gluteus medius tendinopathy. The pain caused by this condition can interfere with sleep and day-to-day weight-bearing tasks, not to mention training.

What Can You Do About It?

One of the most important ways to prevent these problems is to simply be aware of your posture throughout the day. Most people have no idea they hang on one hip. In fact, I was talking about this article to a team I was coaching earlier this week as they were resting. About a third of the group realized they were standing in this stance while drinking their water, and they had no clue they were doing it. Once you realize you have a tendency to adopt this stance, you can make a more conscious effort to stop it. And yes, it will require conscious effort.

After this important step, the best thing you can do is reinforce proper movement through training. Click the links below for videos of glute and core exercises to re-establish proper posture and movement.

• Glute Band Walk
• Bear Walk
• Glute Bridge with March
• Loaded Carries

Just to reiterate – the most important way to counteract those awful negative effects is to stop the one leg booty pop. If you continue to adopt this stance, you will be fighting a battle you can’t win. Make the change today.

More Ways to Enhance Your Hip Health:

• Simple Tips to Improve Essential Natural Hip Function
• Release Your Hip Flexors: Groin Stretch 101
• An Easy, Effective Hip Flexor Stretch You Can Do Anywhere
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo 1 courtesy of Cassie Dionne.

Photo 2 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The Way You Stand Is Damaging Your Body appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Poor posture creates several repercussions – both physically and mentally. In this article, I aim to shed some light on the topic and explain why we should pay attention to our posture and how to reverse the slouch.

Poor Posture Is Exhausting

Our brain is busy making sense of the data it collects in our over-stimulating environments. Lights, sounds, smells, terrain all require a part of our brain to process and guide our actions. Mental stimulation has benefits, but too much is taxing on both our brain and postural alignment.

Applying muscular strength to sit or stand tall and lengthen upward with our torso requires both mental and physical energy. Without adequate mental downtime, our muscles fatigue. This compromises alignment and postural integrity. When we are well rested, strong and flexible, we remain more upright, with good spinal extension. Our ribcage broadens, torso lengthens and taking deep, full breaths becomes easier without the weighty restrictions of anterior collapse compressing into our lungs.

The Anatomy of Poor Posture

When we slouch, our head juts forward and tilts down, flexing anterior neck muscles and over stretching trapezius, splenius, and longissimus. Blood, nerve innervation, and airflow become labored. Vertebrae can be easily pulled out of alignment, creating curvature imbalances along the spine and in some cases causing nerve impingement.

“Nerves in our neck, collarbones, torso, between the ribs, and through our core can become impinged, lessening their ability to relay signals between our brain and body.”

The pectoralis major, pectoralis minor, subclavius, and sternalis muscles become hypertonic (excessively strong) and pull shoulder blades forward with an anterior rotation in the upper arm bones. This causes the sternum and chest to pull inward toward the front spine and down toward the pelvis. This adds more pressure on the diaphragm and inhibits its ability for an unrestricted inhalation.

Nerves in our neck, collarbones, torso, between the ribs, and through our core can become impinged, lessening their ability to relay signals between our brain and body. The phrenic nerve is an important nerve branching off the spinal cord between the third and fifth cervical vertebrae. It runs along the neck and branches off to areas around the heart, pericardium, lungs, and diaphragm. It is the only nerve that supplies signals for our diaphragm to function.

The nerves and muscles of the cervical spine

How to Reverse Poor Posture

Below are three exercises you can do in your own home or office setting. Actually, you can do the Bruegger’s exercise just about anywhere. I recommend it to most clients and teach it in the majority of my Forrest yoga classes to improve posture, alignment, and breathing capacity.

Clients and students walk away after completing these exercises with a greater ability to inhale deeply into the upper chest and feel a decrease of tension in their neck. What I observe is that they are standing upright, with shoulders retracted back and down away from their neck. Additionally, they speak with more energy, which I would deduce is a result of alleviating breathing restrictions and increasing pulmonary circulation.

1. Cobra Pose

Hold posture for 5 breaths minimum, working toward 10.

1. Begin by lying on your belly, elbows bent under your shoulders and palms face down.
2. Breathe and visualize that you are opening your front ribcage and reversing your slouching posture.
3. Inhale and press your torso up, lifting your chest. Your elbows should lift off the floor 3 to 5 inches.
4. Exhale while contracting your glute muscles toward your upper thighbones, creating length in your in low back and sacral-iliac joint.
5. Inhale and pull your chest forward, widening your sternum between your collarbones.
6. Feel your solar plexus and upper abdominal muscles widening. This indicates the diaphragm is drawing down into your mid torso and pressurizing your lungs to receive deeper breaths.
7. Feel your neck lengthening anteriorly, posteriorly, and bi-laterally. Avoid hanging your head forward, looking down, or craning back. You don’t want to feel pinching anywhere along your neck.

2. Bruegger’s Exercise or Bird Wing

5 rounds:

1. Begin with your elbows bent at ninety degrees and squeezing gently at side of your ribcage. Place your forearms forward with palms up and hands open.
2. Breathe with the following in mind: synchronize your breathing with your movement to strengthen your longissimus, illiocostalis, trapezius, and splenius, and expand your ribcage. Inhale into your mid back, pressing your shoulder blades down. On the exhale, roll your forearms out, keeping your elbows tucked at your ribs. On the inhale, roll your forearms forward, keeping your hands in front of your elbows.
3. Feel the bottom tips of your shoulder blades squeezing toward your spine.

3. Arching Over Physioball

Hold for 1 minute, pain free.

1. Begin with your feet on the floor, knees bent, and hands holding your hips until you feel balanced.
2. When you are balanced on the ball, reach your arms wide.
3. Breathe into your upper chest, belly, and down toward your pubic bone.
4. Feel your chest muscles stretching and your neck and head relaxing on the ball to stretch the front of your spine.

Posture Up

A daily practice of good posture is vital to our health. It helps build and maintain the strength required for our diaphragm and lungs to provide our brain and body with adequate air to stay alert and responsive to external stimuli.

The resulting mental clarity will also help with daily productivity and keeping a positive outlook on life. Don’t let stressors weigh you down. Posture up and stand strong.

More Like This:

• Does Good Posture Matter, Or Is It All a Load of Crap?
• Straightening Up: Progressive Posture Alignment, Part 1
• Why Slouching Isn’t the Only Bad Posture
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. The Institute for Advanced Reconstruction, “Phrenic Nerve Injuries.”

Photos 1, 2, and 4 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 3 courtesy of Cassie Goodluck-Johnson.

The post 3 Exercises to Reverse the Effects of Poor Posture appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

In fact, a quick Google search will show you that not only is there no consensus, but there is a number of people vehemently opposed to the idea that posture matters. I’m going to look at the logic underlying both viewpoints and try to elucidate on how, when, and why posture matters.

What Is Posture?

In order to understand the arguments, we need to define our terms as people frequently use the same words to say different things. It’s been my experience that the topic of posture is one where this happens quite a bit.

Posture is just a position. “Posture,” as it’s defined in common usage, is some kind of idealized foundational position. I’ve seen a handful of articles talking about teaching or reaching something called “perfect posture.” Perfect posture is just like perfect exercise technique. There are certainly universal guidelines that can be applied to everyone, but the idea that all seven billion of us will have the exact same baseline alignment is silly. There’s no single, universal perfect posture, in the same way there’s no single, universal perfect technique for every exercise. It has to depend on the person.

Some of the confusion about perfect posture arises in a similar way as the confusion about perfect technique. People hear certain cues: “Shoulders down and back,” “Core tight,” “Tilt your pelvis,” etc. and they internalize those cues as ironclad rules. “Knees out” is a useful cue for some squatters. The same way “tuck your elbows” is useful for some people while benching. But that is far removed from saying every single person needs to push their knees out further and tuck their elbows harder. Cues are context based, technique is context based, and posture is also inevitably context based.

“All I’m going to say is this: there’s also quadriplegics out there. I guess I should just give up on using my limbs since they can’t, right?“

Is There an Ideal Posture?

Despite the lack of universal norms, I think we can all agree that for each individual there is a technical, mechanical ideal we’d like to see in specific movements. The same can be said for posture. Posture is basically your body’s neutral zone. It’s the position of alignment where the most skeletal muscles are at a resting, neutral length. This is important for a couple of reasons.

Tightness

Usually when people feel tight, it’s some combination of physical muscle length and neurological input. That neurological input can be the result of a lot of things, but most of the time it’s based on habitual positions and your body’s response to those positions.

If you habitually sit and stand with an anterior pelvic tilt, you’re lengthening your hamstrings, which could make them feel tight. If that wasn’t enough, you may also be triggering a protective mechanism that causes the muscle to stay slightly contracted to prevent any further and potentially damaging lengthening. Habitually adopting a position of neutrality will go a long way toward preventing the neurological inputs that lead to this type of “tightness.”

Alignment Is Leverage

Your body is a complex system of levers. It’s just basic physics that for each lever there are optimal angles and positions for creating ideal leverage. In the human body, most of these positions are related to postural neutrality. I say “most” because there are some positions you can use to increase your leverage that aren’t neutral – but you’re also probably sacrificing structural integrity and tissue health to do so. Risk/reward.

“[T]o my knowledge there are no quality studies that have effectively demonstrated any correlation between posture and pain or dysfunction.”

Joint Position Is Muscle Activation

The overall activation of skeletal muscle is more or less based on three things:

1. Physical innervation
2. Nervous system control
3. Joint position

Different joint positions can significantly affect your ability to maximally contract a particular muscle or group. Ideal activation of numerous muscles occurs from slight variations on neutral posture. So, once again, neutral is the best universal starting point to achieve optimal muscle activation.

Finding Your Neutral Position

Finding your neutral and learning how to use it will help you reduce feelings of tightness thereby improving flexibility and mobility, in addition to giving you optimized leverage and muscle activation. Seems like kind of a no-brainer, right? So then why would anyone say it doesn’t matter? Well, the science just isn’t there yet.

Thousands of clinicians can vouch for the efficacy of postural interventions when used on the right patients, but to my knowledge there are no quality studies that have effectively demonstrated any correlation between posture and pain or dysfunction. While this may seem absurd given the things I’ve said about posture, there is one glaring issue. All of the studies that have been brought to my attention concerning posture look at it in a vacuum. They find people with pain and just look at their posture or they find people with bad posture and ask them about their pain.

What Is Movement

What is movement? If you had to define movement, what would you say? Bonus points if you can do it without using the word “move.” For me, the best definition I’ve come up with is that movement is the aggregation of multiple positions into a functional output. Movement at its heart is just a slideshow of positions.

“Your body is a complex system of levers. It’s just basic physics that for each lever there are optimal angles and positions for creating ideal leverage.“

Posture, then, is just one of those positions. Pain and injury tend to occur during the transitions, going from one position to the next. Injuries also tend to be caused by fatigue or excessive load of some kind. The combination of these facts is that a single position, by itself, doesn’t mean much.

You can have terrible posture and positions, but if you never use them to do anything particularly challenging, then there’s a good chance you’ll never experience any issues. In fact, if you have terrible resting posture, but whenever you go to perform an athletic movement you magically default to ideal alignment and position, then your resting posture doesn’t matter.

Of course, due to the nature of movement as a behavior and the process of habituation, it’s incredibly unlikely that would happen. Our bodies adapt to the way we move. You certainly don’t need good posture to be strong and healthy, but you also don’t need to be strong and healthy. It’s not really about that.

Inevitably when discussing posture someone always feels obligated to point out that some people have severe structural issues, genetic or otherwise, that prevent them from ever obtaining neutral posture. They then use this to make the leap that all attempts at postural training are pointless. All I’m going to say is this: there’s also quadriplegics out there. I guess I should just give up on using my limbs since they can’t, right?

Continuing the Posture Debate

In closing, posture is incredibly important. What we still need clarity on is exactly how and when. Hopefully this article has helped shed some light on the discussion for you. I’m looking forward to see what the literature comes up with in the future.

Check out these related articles:

• How to Unlock Your Athletic Potential Through Good Posture
• How I Banished Chronic Hip Pain Through Posture Alignment Therapy
• Why Slouching Isn’t the Only Bad Posture
• What’s New On Breaking Muscle Today?

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photos 3 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

Photos 2 and 4 courtesy of Shannon Khoury.

The post Does Good Posture Matter, or Is It All a Load of Crap? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

During a squat, you might be trying to work on keeping your chest up, sending your butt back, and keeping an arch in your lumbar spine, as these movements are typically lacking in a rounded back dysfunction.

Coincidentally, those same three frequently used cues are fairly accurate in describing the unsteady, overextended waddle of a toddler taking his first steps. While I don’t want you to flex your spine into a herniated disc, round your shoulders forward into anterior instability, or shorten your hamstrings by tucking your pelvis under, I most certainly don’t want you walking around like some novice ambulator. The toddler stance may save you from the potential repercussions of flexed positions, but this alternative is no lesser of two evils. An overextended posture and movement dysfunction sets you up for equally disastrous injury risk.

The Dangers of the Toddler Stance

The Toddler Stance – or overextended posture – describes an anterior pelvic tilt, an extension of the thoracolumbar (lower thoracic and lumbar) spine, and usually some hyperextension of the knees. While not ideal for adults, this posture is useful to toddlers as they learn to walk because their body has yet to develop the strength necessary to support good, efficient walking.

Instead, toddlers seek stability by locking out and hanging on ligaments and joint capsules of the knees and lumbopelvic complex. They rapidly grow out of this stage as they develop better strength and balance – right around the same time they start to execute the perfect squat we all strive to recreate. Adults, however, have a much harder time kicking the overextension habit, relying on this strategy to compensate for much more than an unsteady gait.

An Attempt to Fix Core Instability

Overextension is our solution to core instability. Through hanging on structures of the lumbopelvic complex, an athlete can create a stabile midline and go on to achieve whatever greatness he or she is destined for. Specifically, the prong-like facet joints that interface between two adjacent vertebrae lock in when you hold yourself in extension. But we all know that structures only do what your muscles allow them to do, and in this situation that means the spinal extensors along with their buddies the hip flexors are doing a lot.

The toddler stance often appears on heavy back squat day. Watch someone step under the bar, rack the weight, and descend. Those who are not rounding are likely overextending. Using those hip flexors and lumbar extensors, the overextender shoots his hips back until his previously hyperextended knees can hinge into flexion, as the spine forms the exact shape of a knock-hockey stick. Overextension gets the job done and as an added bonus is way less likely to get you called out by your coach, but like all movement dysfunctions, using your body incorrectly means that you are inherently missing out on optimal performance. Of even greater importance, incorrect stabilization strategies predispose you to injury risk.

In overextension, the amount of compression loaded onto the lumbar facet joints skyrockets, which over time with repetitive loading can lead to a stress fracture of the spine called spondylolysis. Spondylolisthes, a similar condition, involves actual displacement of a vertebra, usually after both facet joints of the same level fracture as a result of the undue strain. This sounds bad, but only because it is bad. More commonly, overextenders are likely to get that “pinchy” feeling in the front of their hips, or impingement. Just as with shoulder impingement, faulty mechanics of the hip joint creates a physical compression – in this case usually the rectus femoris, part of your quads. Additionally, with your center of gravity displaced forward by overextension, the lower extremities are forced to make adjustments to keep you upright. Pick your poison – they are all potential products of the toddler stance.

When Toddlers Go Overhead

Overextension clearly creates local mayhem at the lumbopelvic complex and can initiate chaos in the lower extremities from a top-down domino effect, but your upper half is not out of the woods when you look at what happens from the bottom up. In fact, some of the worst overextenders maintain good control over their lower half and instead, these individuals rely on the toddler stance to compensate for another dysfunction.

Athletes who have difficulty with overhead movements commonly recruit an overextended position as a secondary dysfunctional pattern. Restrictions of upper thoracic extension, loss of shoulder flexion, and scapular instability are all potential contributing factors limiting overhead capacity, inviting an overextended posture in to pick up the slack for both mobility and stability deficits.

For athletes lacking range of motion as well as control, the toddler stance allows the athlete to “balance” weights overhead – keeping the weight directly in line with the base of support (the feet). As an added bonus for athletes lacking overhead mobility, overextension creates a false range of motion at the shoulder that is useful when trying to hold, push, or catch heavy weights overhead. The problem with balancing weights overhead is that you are doing just that – balancing – instead of owning that weight and maintaining control.

Sloucher by Day, Badass by Night

Lastly, and most ironically, many overextenders are also slouchers. Yes, these special folks use two contradictory strategies to achieve one common goal – stability. By day, these guys are probably your average desk-jockeys, slumped over a computer, hanging on their overstretched spine. By night, they transform into badass metal-moving mo-fos, overextending and locking out their spine to press an excessive weight overhead. This is a recipe for disaster. Compressing structures and using muscles incorrectly is exactly how you wear and tear your way to surgical repair.

Slouching – the most recognizable of the bad postures – is certainly not the only bad position, and definitely not the only dysfunction that comes with risks. For some of you, the toddler stance dilemma is like that of the chicken and the egg. Was your shoulder dysfunction the gateway drug into overextension? Or did your overextension lead you to believe that your arms were fully overhead when really they had ten degrees to go? For those of you battling the “butt wink” and avoiding a rounded back like the plague, perhaps a misunderstanding of where the middle is led you to inadvertently create a new dysfunction.

Regardless of how you found yourself in overextension, do yourself a favor. Find neutral. Unload your spine. Decompress your hip flexors. One thing is for sure – the only people who should be walking around in overextension are nine-month pregnant women, curve-embellishing tweens, and actual toddlers.

Photos 1 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

The post Why Slouching Isn’t The Only Bad Posture appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Poor Posture Makes You Weak and Vulnerable

If your posture is jacked up from hours of sitting at a desk, then not only will it ruin your snatch, clean, deadlift, and squat, but you’re also setting yourself up for a long list of injuries: shoulder impingement, labrum tears, rotator cuff issues, lower back problems, disc issues in general, hip flexor tendonitis, knee and ankle issues secondary to poor hip and pelvic stabilization. The list goes on and on. Talking about posture may not get the physio-nerd in you all hot and bothered, but I’ll tell you this: if you fix your postural alignment you will jump higher, run faster, hit harder and help prevent a laundry list of injuries that could keep you out of the gym for months.

The Importance of Postural Alignment

Simply put, postural alignment is the basis of proper movement. If your postural alignment is off, your movement patterns suffer. How? Well, since almost all athletic movements revolve around the hips, let’s start there.

Anterior Pelvic Tilt Ruins Your Core Control and Hip Extension

The problem becomes that when your hip flexors are tight, it throws off your pelvic position. Once you stand back up, your tight hip flexors will pull your pelvis forward into an anterior pelvic tilt (APT) and this can cause a whole host of issues. First and perhaps most obviously, tight hip flexors can contribute heavily to hip flexor tendonitis, particularly when you try to use them in a flexion heavy activity like running. Having your pelvis tilted anteriorly will also lengthen your abdominal muscles into a less than ideal position, which can lead to poor abdominal control and poor core stabilization. This scenario, when compounded with the additional pressure exerted on your lower back from the poor pelvic position, can cause a whole lot of lumbar pain.

When you have a pronounced APT (as shown on the right side of the illustration) you’re also lacking the ability to achieve full hip extension – and that’s huge.

Opening your hips quickly and powerfully is the basis of almost all explosive movements in athletics and weightlifting. Tight hip flexors and a pronounced APT will make you run slower, jump lower, and leave you with a rather embarrassing snatch.

On top of lacking the range of motion required to reach full extension, if you haven’t been fully extending your hips then the motor patterns to do so haven’t been well developed. As a result your hip extensors (read: glutes and hamstrings) probably aren’t firing as well as they could be.

On top of these basic postural problems, the fact that you’re sitting on your hamstrings and glutes for hours a day leaves them in disadvantageous positions. In particular, your hamstrings are chronically shortened by their insertion and chronically lengthened at their origin, rather than being at a comfortable and neutral length and tension point along the entire muscle. All this to say, you’re just adding more fuel to the postural fire.

Your Internally Rotated Shoulders

Probably the second largest set of issues from poor posture is at the shoulders. Want to do a simple test? Stand up and let your hands hang down by your sides naturally. Just let ‘em hang hang wherever they will. Now take a look at your palms. For the most part your palms should face each other. In other words, your thumbs should point forward and your palms should face the midline of your body. If your palms face backwards, then congratulations, your shoulders are passively internally rotated. Well, it’s not really congratulations because passive internal rotation is pretty terrible.

Once again, this insidious physiological issue is often the result of simply leaning forwards with your upper back hunched and your shoulders rounded for extended periods of time. Internal rotation is a basic motion at your shoulder (just as flexion is a basic motion at the hip), but when your shoulders sit in internal rotation, then the muscles responsible for producing that motion (your lats, teres major, pec major, subscapularis, and anterior deltoid) suffer a similar fate to your hip flexors in chronic flexion. They get shortened and locked down at that length because it’s the easiest way for your body to maintain that wonderful hunched position.

Why Does Passive Internal Shoulder Rotation Matter?

Well, you’re probably missing end-range flexion and external rotation, which will make it harder to brace your shoulders and get them into a healthy position for any type of pressing or overhead motion. Generally speaking, the most stable position for your shoulders involves scapular retraction and external rotation. If your shoulders are passively internally rotated the muscles responsible for scapular retraction and external rotation are likely lengthened, weak, and firing poorly.

Are you starting to see the trend? Scapular mobility is a huge part of shoulder integrity and athletic performance. Poor posture screws with your scapular mobility. The best part is that we haven’t even approached the further issues that poor posture can cause in your neck and upper back. (hint: more pain, weakness, and loss of mobility)

How to Have better Posture Right Now

There are a lot of complicated issues involved in posture and similarly complicated approaches to handling the problem. While many things have a place in any course of therapy or rehab, the nature of diagnosing and treatment movement disorders must be one of simplicity first.

Often when dealing with pain or weakness we attack the joint and the associated muscles without attempting to understand the causes that led the muscles and soft tissue to get tweaked in the first place. The first step in treating poor posture is teaching yourself what good posture is.

In a general sense, proper postural alignment can be attained by doing the following:

1. Stand up and flex your glutes. This should help tilt your pelvis posteriorly (reversing the APT we’ve been talking about).
2. Now flex your abs just a bit, only enough to maintain the pelvic position so you can relax your glutes.
3. Now stand up tall as if a string was pulling the top of your head to the ceiling. Twist your thumbs all the way out so they almost point behind you while pulling your shoulder blades back a bit.
4. Now relax your arms and try to maintain that shoulder position by using only the muscles in your upper back.

For most people this sequence will get you within 90% of what your postural alignment should be. Some of us may need further stretching and corrective exercises to help achieve the right positions, but I do believe the best fix for posture is forcing yourself to maintain it. One of the issues with teaching correct posture is that posture, strictly speaking, should be reflexive. In other words, you shouldn’t have to think to achieve good posture. That being said, like with other movement patterns, the only way to get to that point is by practicing good posture over and over until it happens naturally. This is the basis of motor patterning.

Now Keep Doing That

Once you’ve learned what proper alignment feels like, the best way to reinforce it and maintain it is to use it. Exercises like deadlifts and kettlebell swings require you to achieve proper posture and then load that postural pattern, which really drives the point home in a neurological sense. When it get’s dangerous is when you’re doing all of these movements with poor posture. This reinforces everything about the negative positions and compensations you’ve already become victim to. Once you start reinforcing and using bad patterns, weakness and injury are not far away.

Proper postural alignment is the basis of all movement. If your posture sucks, your movement suffers and you might get hurt. Fix your posture and you’ve just taken a huge step in unlocking the full athletic potential of your body. You may also avoid some injuries along the way. Are you starting to understand why you need to pay attention to posture?

Photos 1, 2, & 4 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 3 by Anonymous (Posture & Foundation Garments) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo 5 courtesy of Pat Flynn.

The post How to Unlock Your Athletic Potential Through Good Posture appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

However, for most trainers and athletes, the mechanics of posture and gait are poorly understood. This is for good reason, as it’s not a simple issue and not necessarily well understood in science either. To get a better grasp on this issue, a study this month in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning looked specifically at how lower body mechanics interact with gait. The researchers were primarily interested in how these changes might lead to falls in the elderly clients of personal trainers, but the results apply to all of us, whether trainer, athlete, old, or young.

To me, the results were intriguing and not altogether expected. When we think of age-related decline, we usually think of the hip. However, the hip wasn’t the primary issue in this case. In fact, changes to the hip resulting from age didn’t significantly affect gait at all. It was actually activity level that made the most difference to the hips. More accurately, the less exercise at any age, the worse the biomechanics were.

For Breaking Muscle readers, activity level probably isn’t a big issue. Most of us probably get enough to keep our hips strong and our posture in check, so long as we stay flexible enough. So one would think that age must affect the knees instead. Believe it or not, no. Although the knee was affected by both exercise and age, none of those changes significantly impacted gait or posture. The knee generally had the strength and health to maintain good biomechanics.

The culprit in poor gait as we age is actually our ankles. As it turns out, growing weakness in the ankle shifts the pattern of movement and puts stress on joints all the way up the chain. Since the hips and knees maintain strength even as we age, it seems they take the brunt of these changes, which makes us more likely to get injuries, joint problems, and other issues.

As I mentioned earlier, this study isn’t just important for our older readers. Gait and posture issues affect us all. A pain in your knee or back might actually start in your ankle, and without attention, this research indicates it’s only a matter of time before your ankles will be a pain somewhere else.

While the researchers recommended keeping the ankles strong, they also said this might not be enough. Making regular time for dynamic activities that engage the ankles from all angles, such as basketball, might be the best method for keeping your posture and gait going strong for life.

References:

1. Lee Cabell, et. al., “Effect of age and activity level on lower extremity gait dynamics: an introductory study,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 27(6), 2013.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How Gait and Posture Change With Age and Exercise appeared first on Breaking Muscle.