Have A Hunch

POSTURE AND SHOULDER RESET

If, like me you have worked for years hunched over a computer for eight hours a day or more, often under stressful conditions and with little or no time for short breaks or even moments to assess how you're sitting, breathing or holding your posture correctly, then maybe you too will be feeling the painful consequences in your body right now.

The shoulder joint is the most complex in the body. A ball and socket system,  it has the most range of movement and therefore has more potential to get injured through incorrect and over-usage. There are major stabilising muscles in the joint and multiple cross-over intersections with the shoulder connecting to the back and chest muscles. One of the major muscle groups are the pectorals and these powerful muscles, made up of the pectoralis major and pectoralis minor, if over-trained, or trained without also training the antagonist muscle groups, will become tight and our shoulders unbalanced. This could cause a multitude of issues including poor posture and early wear & tear of the shoulder joint.

The key thing here is to understand how important stretching is. Taking a few minutes each day to stretch out the muscles would be the sensible thing to do, but we rarely give it the time. Ideally, we all take up the practice of yoga to give us the required quality time to focus on parts of the body that are most under stress, help improve our ability to relax and set aside time to stretch out our muscles.

Without having the time to practice yoga, we should at the very least, have a regular maintenance stretch of the muscles that will have positive affects on keeping our postures correct and retain our full shoulder functionality. To stretch out the chest muscles and ensure the shoulders are in their correct position, there's a couple of techniques that really work. The exercises take no more than a few minutes and Jeff, in the video below, gives a very clear indication of how to do these stretches. These techniques are by no means intended just for body builders and exercise fanatics, they benefit us all. The difference in tightness felt across the chest, neck and shoulders can be improved significantly even after just the first time of trying them.