Are Your Shoulders Stiff?

September 13, 2010 admin 6 comments

: Image via Wikipedia

Hi,

Are your shoulders stiff? How about your neck?

If you spend a lot of time sitting you will most likely encounter a stiff neck and shoulders.

That is because the longer you sit, the more you tend to lean just a little bit forward.

You do this at the computer, while driving, while eating, while reading and while watching TV.

As you can see those hours add up day after day after day.

This will cause a muscle imbalance and eventually cause you to have tight shoulders and neck muscles. The only natural position for you then becomes a slight lean forward.

If you exercise like most people (this is true especially for men) you will only compound the program.

That is because most people tend to do a lot more exercises for the chest and shoulders than for the back.

Bench presses and forward raises with dumbbells are the two prime culprits here.

Very seldom do you see someone working the rear deltoids.

Very seldom do you see someone pulling the shoulder blades together as the initial movement on their back exercises.

The good news is this condition can be corrected fairly easily. It will take some time because remember you have been sitting this way for a long time.

Anyhow, the exercise is called stick ups. This is because you are raising your hands over your head as if someone tells you to stick ‘em up.

Only you will do this against a wall.

Now there is a popular exercise program out there that does show this exercise. But, they do it all wrong. And they give no details on how to do it properly.

So here is how you do it. (And yes, I will have a video of this in the very near future.)

Stand with your back facing a wall with a ceiling high enough to raise your arms all the way up.

Your feet should be about 6 inches from the wall and your butt, shoulders and head should be touching the wall.

Raise your arms and hands over your head as in the “stick ‘em up” position. Now try to touch your wrists and elbows to the wall and slide them down.

Slide your elbows down until they touch (or almost touch) your sides.

The goal is to keep your butt, head, shoulders, elbows and wrists touching the wall throughout the exercise.

If you are anything like me, you will have trouble doing this. But, the goal is to keep practicing until your shoulder mobility increases.

This will have a profound effect on your posture also.

I am sure you have noticed people that walk and sit ram rod straight. There are so few people that do this that they stand out.

Notice that their shoulders are always back. This is what you are striving for.

As your mobility improves you will notice that your shoulder and neck pain will start to lesson and gradually disappear.

Remember this will take some time to get back to a normal range of motion, maybe even a year or more. But, the improvements will start almost immediately.

So, if your shoulders are stiff, start doing this exercise now. Do it for a few minutes every day.

And even if your shoulders aren’t stiff, you can still do these exercises to prevent them becoming stiff.

Thanks,

Mike Val