"With Great Posture Comes Great Responsibility."

The year 2020 has left its mark on our daily lives in many ways, but it continues to wreak havoc on our bodies in even more ways unseen.

Overnight, so many of us switched to working from home, transforming kitchen tables, bar tops, and couches into our home offices. As I type, I am currently at my kitchen table making the best of my own "desk" situation. With laptops so low, our necks crane; by sitting for hours on our sofa during zoom meetings, our lumbar spines curve out of proper alignment; wearing masks promote us to "scoop" our necks so the mask sits high on our noses.  Sound familiar? Let's get ahead of it.

As a Fitness professional, I am seeing a lot of neck tightness in the scalene muscles, tightness in the levators scapulae, chronic back pain from sitting in a "C-curve," and insanely immobile shoulders.  Are you hunched over reading this right now? Sit up! Pull the shoulders back, raise your head tall and confidently,  and... feel how uncomfortable that is. Our bodies have found a new "set point" where it feels most comfortable and safe, away from any sign of tightness or discomfort.  This new position is forward folded for a lot of us, with chest muscles being too tight and the head falling forward into your phone or computer screen. 

Follow these three simple steps: Release, Stretch, and strengthen.

Release:

As with any tight muscle, we must release the tension through myofascial release.  Most commonly, we use foam rollers or lacrosse balls.  Using foam rollers on your backs and legs is easy as these are large muscles and easy to target with the roller. Releasing tight muscles from desk work comes with a slight challenge as these muscles are in smaller areas and difficult to target with the broad strokes of the foam roller.  Lacrosse balls, massage balls or even the TheraCane would provide greater relief with pin-point accuracy around the neck and shoulder blades.  Even better for my executive clients, they can take these tools on the road and use them in the office while in a suit, all without having to get down on the ground to roll.  Set yourself up for success by eliminating these obstacles.  Apply pressure on the tight muscles, achieving an intensity of six or seven out of ten; your eyes should not be tearing up from the pressure applied.  Hold these pressure points for 30 seconds to one minute, and complete two to three sets across each muscle.  COVID neck pain or simply being sore in the hamstrings, the rules remain consistent: hold the pressure steady for more than 30 seconds.

Stretch:

After a week or two of daily work towards releasing some of these tight muscles, our bodies are ready for the next phase in the program: stretching.  Now that our muscles have calmed and released a bit, we can apply static stretching to these areas. Static stretching is holding a stretch for more than 30 seconds (60 seconds preferred) and repeating for two to three sets on each muscle. After releasing the tightness in the phase one, we can now achieve a physical lengthening of the muscle fiber with this stretching.  

Stretching should not, and cannot, be intense.  The desired intensity is simply a five out of ten and NEVER MORE than that.  Our bodies sense stretch and, to protect themselves from ripping apart like a Thanksgiving wishbone, guard themselves with involuntary tightening when the intensity is too great. This is why we must go easy on the stretches; prove to your body that you are not looking to strain the muscles by giving ONLY a low intensity effort.  While stretching, one should be able to hold a phone conversation and speak clearly without strain in the voice.  After several weeks of daily stretching, the muscle fibers are linearized and now resting a bit longer than previous.  At this time, proper posture is easy to find but hard to hold. That is where the third phase begins.

strengthening:

The purpose of the activation/strengthening phase is to secure and withstand proper posture and joint alignment by increasing the strength of the involved muscles. I want you strong enough to hold them there all throughout your day.  Isometric exercises (ones where you maintain a posture for 30 to 60 seconds) are great choices during this phase. Planks, shoulder blade protractions, neck retractions, and cobras all are great choices.  These can be performed with your own bodyweight on a yoga mat, with bands, or even free weights. 

Now, with great posture comes great responsibility.  

Use these releases, stretches, and strengthening exercises frequently to uphold this proper alignment.  Though you will obviously be relieved from your forward neck and shoulders, continuing this protocol will help with everything else in the gym as well; deadlifts have a better support in the spine; the bench press now has a stronger shoulder control; and pull-ups are enhanced by the shoulder blades' proper movement on the back. 

Let’s first get aligned, then you will be on your way to your strongest self yet!