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5 Exercises You Should Perform If You Sit All Day

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Do you sit all day? Don’t worry you are not alone.

Sitting throughout the day, and a more sedentary lifestyle in general, has dramatically increased over the last several decades as desk jobs have become more popular and our devices have taken over as our form of entertainment.

The media loves to tell you that “sitting is the new smoking.” This is backwards in my mind, and something I’ve discussed in detail in a past article Sitting isn’t bad for you, not moving is.

In the article, I listed 3 things you should do if you sit all day to stay healthy:

  1. Move, Often
  2. Reverse your posture
  3. Exercise

For those looking for some specific exercise, here are 5 great exercises to perform to combat sitting all day.

5 Exercises You Should Perform if You Sit All Day

I’ve been talking about the concept of Reverse Posturing for years. The concept is essentially that we need to reverse the posture that we do the most throughout the day to keep our body balanced and prevent overuse.

Sitting involves a predominantly flexed posture, so doing exercises that promote the posterior chain would be helpful. These will depend on each person, but if I had to pick a basic set of exercises these would be the 5 exercises to combat sitting all day.

Thoracic Extension

The first exercise is for mobility of your thoracic spine. This is the portion of your back that becomes the most flexed while sitting all day. This is probably the biggest bang for you buck exercises in my mind:

If you are looking for more drills, you should view one of my past articles for several more great thoracic mobility drills.

True Hip Flexor Stretch

The second exercises is another mobility drill, this time for the pelvis. We always perform mobility drills first to maximize range of motion. This exercise is called the true hip flexor stretch, something I termed several years ago after seeing so many people do this stretch poorly.

This exercise will help prevent your hips from getting too tight, as well as put your entire spine in a better position.

Chin Nods

Now that we’ve done a couple of mobility drills, let’s try to reinforce a few movement patterns to reverse your sitting posture and activate a few select muscle groups.
The first is the chin nod, which is great for the neck muscles and forward head posture. Many have heard of the chin tuck exercise, but the chin nod exercise is a little different in my mind.

Shoulder W’s

The next exercise builds off the chin nods, and now combines the chin nod posture with retraction of your shoulders. This will help turn on your posterior rotator cuff and scapular muscles all in one drill.

Glute Bridge

Lastly, we want to focus on the glutes and their ability to extend the hips, and taking some pressure off your low back. This glute bridge exercise, in combination with the above true hip flexor stretch, will be a great combo to help with your overall posture and core control.

How to Integrate These Exercises into Your Day

An easy way to start and keep it simple is to perform each of these 10 times. These should take less than 5 minutes to perform and will make a big impact on how you feel throughout the day.
Many people ask, “how many times a day should I perform these?” Or even, “do I need to do these every day?”

You don’t need to do these every day. Just on the days that you sit… :)

But seriously, remember these are 5 exercises you should do if you sit all day, so doing them at the end of each day to reverse your posture is a great idea. Many people who sit for a really long time like to perform them during the day as well.

As you get comfortable with them, you may find that certain ones help you feel better than others. Feel free to add repetitions to those as needed.

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Sorry, Sitting Isn’t Really Bad for You

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Over the last several years, the health concerns surrounding sitting have really been highlighted by the health and fitness crowds, as well as the mainstream media.  In fact, there have been entire books published on this topic.  I’ve seen articles with titles such as “Sitting is Evil,” “Sitting is the New Smoking,” and even “Sitting will kill you.”

Wow, those seem pretty aggressive.  We’ve been sitting since the beginning of time!  I’m going to really shock the world with this comment…

Sorry, sitting isn’t really bad for you.

Yup.  There is nothing wrong with sitting.  I’m actually doing it right now as I write this article.  You probably are too while you read this article.

Don’t get me wrong, sedentary lifestyles are not healthy.  According to the World Health Organization, sedentary lifestyles increase all causes of mortality and raises the risk of health concerns such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, and even depression and anxiety.

But let’s get one thing straight:

It’s not sitting that is bad for you, it’s NEVER moving that is bad for you.

By putting all the blame on sitting, we lose focus on the real issue, which is lack of movement and exercise.  We are seeing a shift in people switching to standing desks at work, still not exercising, but thinking that they are now making healthy choices.

This is so backwards it boggles my mind.

It it all begin with the negative myth that “sitting is the new smoking” and completely ignores the true issue.

The body adapts amazingly well to the forces and stress that we apply to it throughout the day.  If you sit all day, your body will adapt.  Your body will lose mobility to areas like your hips, hamstrings, and thoracic spine.  Your core is essentially not needed while sitting so thinks it’s not needed anymore during other activities.  And several muscles groups get used less frequently while sitting and weaken over time, like your glutes, scapular retractors, and posterior rotator cuff.

Your body is a master compensator, and will adapt to the stress applied (or not applied) to make your efficient at what you do all day.

Unfortunately, when all you do is sit all day, and you never reverse this posture or exercise, your body adapts to this stress to make you the most efficient sitter.
That’s right, you get really good at sitting.

For example, think about what happens to the core when you sit all day.

One of the functions of your core is to maintain good posture and essentially to keep the bones of your skeleton from crashing to the floor.  The core is engaged at a low level of muscle activity throughout the day for postural needs.

The problem with sitting is that the chair also serves this function, so your core isn’t needed to keep you upright, the chair serves this function. If sitting is all you do, then when you stand up, your core essentially isn’t accustomed to providing this postural support so you rock back onto your static stabilizers by doing things like standing with a large anterior pelvic tilt and lumbar extension.

bad sitting posture isnt bad for you core control

Unfortunately, this becomes the path of least resistance, and most energy efficient, for your body.  Your core gets used to relying on the chair to function, then when you need it, gets lazy.

Despite what you may read in the media, it’s OK to sit all day.  That is, as long as you are reversing this posture at some point.  This can be as specific as exercises designed to combat sitting and as general as simply taking a walk in the evening.

 

3 Strategies to Combat Sitting All Day

I want to share the 3 things that I often discuss with my patients and clients.  You can apply these yourself or use them to discuss with your clients as well.  But if you sit all day, you really should:

  1. Move, Often
  2. Reverse your posture
  3. Exercise

But the real first step is to stop blaming sitting and start focusing on the real issue.  It’s lack of movement and exercise that is the real concern, not sitting.

 

Step 1 – Move, Often

The first step to combatting sitting all day is to move around often.  The body needs movement variability or it will simply adapt to what it does all day.

I get it, we all work long days, and sitting is often required in many of our jobs.  But the easiest way to minimize the effects of sitting all day is to figure out ways to get up and move throughout the day.

This doesn’t need to be 10 minutes of exercise, it could simply be things like getting up to fill up a water bottle or taking quick 2 minute walk around the office.  When I am not in the clinic or gym, I personally tend to work in my home office.  What I do is try to work in one hour chunks, so I will get up and walk around in between chunks to get a glass of water, snack, or use the bathroom.

This works well for me, but you need to find what works for you.  I know of others that use things like Pomodoro timers, or even some of the newer fitness tracking devices, which can remind you to stand up and move around at set times.

 

Step 2 – Reverse Your Posture

I’ve been talking about the concept of Reverse Posturing for years.  The concept is essentially that we need to reverse the posture that we do the most throughout the day to keep our body balanced and prevent overuse.

Sitting involves a predominantly flexed posture, so doing exercises that promote the posterior chain would be helpful.  These will depend on each person but a basic set of exercises may look like:

  • Thoracic extension
  • True hip flexor stretch
  • Chin nods
  • Shoulder W’s
  • Glute bridges

reverse your posture

I have another article you should check out on the 5 Exercises to Perform if You Sit All Day.  Perform each of these for 10 reps.  These should take 5 minutes to perform and will make a big impact on how you feel throughout the day.

 

Step 3 – Exercise

Remember going back to some of the past concepts above, the body adapts to the stress applied.  To combat this perfectly, a detailed exercise program that is designed specifically for you and comprehensively includes a focus on total body and core control is ideal.

This will assure that the muscle groups that are not being used while sitting all day get the strength and mobility they need, while the core gets trained to stabilize the trunk during functional movements.

If you want to get the most out of your body and stay optimized, you need to do things like work on your hip and thoracic spine mobility, strengthen your rotator cuff, groove your hinge pattern, and learn how to deadlift and work your glutes.

 

Sitting Isn’t Bad For You, Not Moving Is

As a profession, we need to get away from blaming sitting as the enemy and labeling it evil.  Our society is sitting more and more each generation.  We need to be honest with ourselves and realize that sitting isn’t the problem, it’s not moving enough that is the concern.  We need to stop pointing fingers and get to the root of the problem.

Go ahead and sit, just move more often and use these 3 strategies to combat sitting all day.

 

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The True Hip Flexor Stretch

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The hip flexor stretch has become a very popular stretch in the fitness and sports performance world, and rightly so considering how many people live their lives in anterior pelvic tilt.  However, this seems to be one of those stretches that I see a lot of people either performing incorrectly or too aggressively.  I talked about this in a recent Inner Circle webinar on 5 common stretches we probably shouldn’t be using, but I wanted to expand on the hip flexor stretch as I feel this is pretty important.

I’ve started teaching what I call the “true hip flexor stretch.”

I call it the true hip flexor stretch as I want you to truly work on stretching the hip flexor and not just torque your body into hip and lumbar extension.  It’s very easy for the body to take the path of least resistance when stretching.  People with tight hip flexors and poor hip extension often just end up compensating and either hyperextend their low back or stress the anterior capsule of the hip joint.

I explain this in more detail in this video:

The good thing is, there is a simple and very effective.  Once you adjust and perform the true hip flexor stretch, most people say they never felt a stretch like that before, hence the name “true hip flexor stretch.”

True Hip Flexor Stretch

To perform the true hip flexor stretch, you want to de-emphasize hip extension and focus more on posterior pelvic tilt.  Watch this video for a more detailed explanation:

Key Points

  • There is a difference between a quadriceps stretch and a hip flexor stretch.  When your rationale for performing the stretch is to work on stretching your hip flexor, focus on the psoas and not the rectus femoris.
  • Keep it a one joint stretch.  Many people want to jump right to performing a hip flexor stretch while flexing the knee.  This incorporates the rectus and the psoas, but I find far too many people can not appropriately perform this stretch.  They will compensate, usually by stretching their anterior capsule too much or hyperextending their lumbar spine.
  • Stay tall.  Resist the urge to lean into the stretch and really extend your hip.  Most people are too tight for this, trust me.  You’ll end up stretch out the anterior hip joint and abdominals more than the hip flexor.
  • Make sure you incorporate a posterior pelvic tilt.  Contract your abdominals and your glutes to perform a posterior pelvic tilt.  This will give your the “true” stretch we are looking for when choosing this stretch.  Many people wont even need to lean in a little, they’ll feel it immediately in the front of their hip.
  • If you don’t feel it, squeeze your glutes harder.  Many people have a hard time turing on their glutes while performing this stretch, but it is key.
  • If you still don’t feel it, lean in just a touch.  If you are sure your glutes and abs are squeezed and you are in posterior pelvic tilt and still don’t feel it much, lean in just a few inches.  Our first progression of this is simple to lean forward in 1-3 inches, but keep your pelvis in posterior tilt.
  • Guide your hips with your hands.  I usually start this stretch with your hands on your hips so I can teach you to feel posterior pelvic tilt.  Place your fingers in the front and thumbs in the back and cue them to posterior tilt and make their thumbs move down.
  • Progress to add core engagement.  Once they can master the posterior pelvic tilt, I usually progress to assist by curing core engagement.  You can do this by pacing both hands together on top of your front knee and push straight down, or by holding a massage stick or dowel in front of you and pushing down into the ground.  Key here is to have arms straight and to push down with you core, not your triceps.

I use this for people that really present in an anterior pelvic tilt, or with people that appear to have too loose of an anterior hip capsule.  In fact, this has completely replaced the common variations of hip flexor stretches in all of our programs at Champion.  This works great for people with low back pain, hip pain, and postural and biomechanical issues related to too much of an anterior pelvic tilt.

Give the true hip flexor stretch a try and let me know what you think.

Assessing Scapular Position

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The latest Inner Circle webinar recording on the Assessing Scapular Position is now available.

Assessing Scapular Position

Assessing_Scapular_PositionThis month’s Inner Circle webinar was on Assessing Scapular Position.  While I have openly stated in the past that assessing scapular position is not as significant as looking at dynamic mobility, I do feel it is worth starting your assessment with position.  You have to know where to start to know where to go.  This is a great follow up to my past talk on Scapular Dyskinesis.

Here is how I assess scapular position, but more importantly how I integrate it into my assessment.

To access the webinar, please be sure you are logged in and are a member 0f the Inner Circle program.

Is Resting Scapular Position Important?

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Scapular posture assessmentA common component of any shoulder or neck evaluation is observation of scapular position and motion.  Posture assessment is popular and attempts to identify any asymmetries between sides.

As our understanding of the mechanics of the shoulder and scapular improve, the reliability and validity of assessing resting scapular position have recently been challenged.  Many authors believe that we may be overassessing and assuming dysfunction based on resting scapular position, which would imply that many corrective exercise strategies for the scapula may be either ineffective or inappropriate.

I have really changed how I assess and treat scapular dysfunction over the last decade.  My research has led my change in thought process, but other studies have also been reported in the literature.

Does Poor Scapular Position Correlate to Poor Scapular Mobility?

My exploration of scapular asymmetries and dyskinesis led me to first assess scapular position.  In baseball players, asymmetries of scapular position are common, and perhaps a normal adaptation.

While these resting static asymmetries were noted, I started to observe that these asymmetries seemed to become much less obvious during active movement.  As an example of this, we noted that the resting static position of the scapula on the throwing side was 14mm lower, which was statistically significant.  However, when the arms were abducted in the scapular plane to 90 degrees of elevation, the scapula was now symmetrical with the nonthrowing shoulder.

Scapular position

This really made me start thinking about the validity of resting static scapular posture.

To further evaluate this, we then looked at 3D electromagnetic tracking to see if poor static posture correlated to poor scapular mobility, or dyskinesis.  We looked at this in a few studies and found that resting static position does not correlate to poor movement patterns.

Several studies have shown that these scapular asymmetries are common in the general population too, so I consider my findings in the overhead athlete relevant to any population.  In my experience these same results occur in other populations.

Does Scapular Position Correlate to Injury?

The validity of static resting posture of the scapula has come into recent debate as tests such as the Lateral Scapular Slide Test, described by Kibler, has been shown to find asymmetries in both symptomatic and asymptomatic people.  Static postural tests like this have been shown to have both poor reliability and validity, meaning that we are not sure how accurate they are or what these tests actually measure.

Probably more importantly, however, is the finding that static tests have been unable to identify people with and without shoulder injuries, such as in this systematic review from the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

in a 2-year prospective study of over 100 recreational athletes, a recent study in the International Journal of Sports Medicine showed that static resting scapular position did not correlate to the future occurrence of shoulder pain.  They did note that the people who developed shoulder pain demonstrated decreased scapular upward rotation at 45 and 90 degrees of elevation, further suggesting that dynamic mobility is more important that static.

These studies are difficult to conduct but it appears that scapular asymmetries are common in the general population and do not correlate to injury.  That does not necessarily mean they do not feed into dysfunction, but the correlation may not be as factual as many think.

Recommendations

So what do we know about resting scapular position?

Based on our current understanding of scapular posture, it is hard to place a lot of emphasis on static posture as it does not appear to be reliable, valid, correlate to injury, or correlate to poor movement patterns.

I think one of the worst things you can do is assume dysfunctional movement will occur based on a posture assessment.  For example, you would not want to cue excessive scapular movement during arm elevation just because the person is resting in a certain scapular position.  You have a very large chance of just further facilitating your compensatory pattern by forcing the motion instead of finding the underlying cause.

People often seem to forget one VERY important fact:

The scapula is part of the scapulothorax joint.  The position of the thorax and spine will greatly influence the position of the scapula.  [Click to Tweet]

Perhaps an anterior pelvic tilt is causing increased thoracic kyphosis and scapular anterior tilt.  Perhaps a forward head posture is causing shortness of the levator scapula and causing downward rotation of the scapula.  Cueing movement without addressing the alignment, soft tissue restrictions, and other real issues is going to make this a lot worse.

These are just two examples but hopefully demonstrate the complexity of assessing scapular position and mobility.

To learn more about my approach, I have a recorded webinar for Inner Circle members that reviews how I assess and treat scapular dyskinesis, click here to learn more about my Inner Circle.

Scapular Dyskinesis

Do I still look at posture and scapular position?  Sure.  I start there, but realize that dynamic movement is likely much more important to assess.  I would not recommend that you apply corrective exercises based solely on resting scapular position.

A Simple Exercise for the Scapula, Posterior Chain, and Posture

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I am always a fan of simple exercises that get a big bang for my buck.  I want to be able to streamline my programs to have as little fluff as possible.

One exercise I often use for scapular control is called the “cheerleader exercise,” which my friend Russ Paine in Houston first showed me and has popularized over the years.  Russ included this exercise in one of his latest publications on The Role of the Scapula in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy.  The article is free to read and is a great adjunct to my recent webinar on Scapular Dyskinesis.

Russ teamed up with another pioneer in sports physical therapy, Mike Voight, to write the new manuscript.  The amazing part is that Russ and Mike wrote one of the landmark articles on scapular rehabilitation in JOSPT in 1993, twenty years ago!

The cheerleader exercise uses a piece of Theraband or rubber tubing to perform a series of reciprocal exercises focusing on scapular retraction.  You begin by grasping a piece of tubing between both hands with your arms raised forward at shoulder height.  Pull both hands apart into horizontal abduction.  Then, return to the starting position and pull one arm down and the other up in a diagonal pattern.  For those familiar with proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) drills, these are D2 flexion and D1 extension positions.  Return to the starting position again and switch the diagonals.

scapula cheerleader exercise

This is a great posterior chain drill that works on developing strength and endurance in a functional scapular patterns.  It is a great drill when working on facilitating a more posterior dominant posture, and getting out of our terrible anterior dominant sitting posture.

This one drill effectively combines several exercises that focus on scapular retraction, upward rotation, and posterior tilt.  But what I really like about the exercise is the reciprocal nature of the exercise.

scapula exercise

Think about it, running, jumping, throwing and other activities always involve a reciprocal involvement of upward arm movement and reciprocal arm extension.

I don’t use this as a replacement for pure isotonic strengthening of the scapula muscles, such as the YTWL exercises, but it is a nice drill to work on integrated patterns and endurance.  Next time you are looking for a drill to enhance scapular control, posterior chain strength, and postural awareness, try the cheerleader exercise.

3 Myths of Scapula Exercises

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Scapula exercises are very common and usually a needed component to any rehabilitation or corrective exercise program.  Like anything else, there seems to be a few commonly accepted themes related to scapular exercises that many people take for hard fast rules.  No program is right everyone!  Here are 3 myths of scapular exercises that I thought would good to discuss.

Pinch Your Shoulder Blades Together

Pinch your shoulder blades.  Squeeze your scaps together.  Retract your shoulders back.  Pack your scapula.  These are all common coaching cues given during scapular exercises.  The goal of all of these concepts is essentially to get into better posture and “set” your scapula back, ultimately resulting in better posture and better movement patterns when performing exercises.  Given that as a society we have an abundance of people with posture.  The classic Upper Body Cross Syndrome of forward head, rounded shoulders.

Normal scapulohumeral rhythm requires a sequence of shoulder and scapular movement simultaneously.  Pinching your shoulder blades together is essentially contracting your middle trapezius to fully retract your scapula and then move your arm.  While this isn’t nearly as bad on shoulder mechanics as lifting your arm in a fully protracted position, I don’t think it is most advantageous to lift your arm in a fully retracted position.  By holding your scapula back, which is essentially performing and isometric trapezius contraction, you are likely limiting the normal protraction and upward rotation that occurs with arm elevation and movement.

Scapula Exercises

If the goal of this common coaching cue is to improve posture and improve mechanics while exercising the arm, maybe a better cue would be to instruct thoracic extension.  Perhaps even combine this thoracic extension with upper cervical extension such as when performing the chin nod with postural exercises like we talked about recently.  This truly improves your posture.  Realize that you can still have a very kyphotic and rounded thoracic spine and retract your scapulas.  Retracting the your scapulas isn’t a bad visual, but the goal is to really get your thoracic spine extended.

Work on Mobility and Strength to Improve Scapular Symmetry

Scapula StrengthWe’ve all been guilty of assessing someone’s posture, finding this forward head rounded shoulder posture, and then assuming we need to work on things like pec and upper cervical mobility while strengthening the lower trap and deep neck flexors.  These are all good things to work on, however this is likely a simplistic view.

First let’s take a step back and get something out of the way.  Your scapulas are not symmetrical.  The vast majority of people are not symmetrical and I would bet even people that are close have subtle differences.  The fact is, we are unilateral creatures.  We are typically one hand dominant and we typically function with predominant movement patterns that are related to this.  This tends to really become an issue when we start to talk about people that perform a repetitive unilateral activity all day.  I’m not just talking about athletes like baseball pitchers, you sitting there at your computer using your mouse in your right hand counts too.

This inherently creates asymmetries throughout the body, including the hips, spine, rib cage, and of course the scapula.

In my opinion, scapular position is more related to rib and thoracic position than anything else, including tight muscles and weak or inhibited muscles.  The scapula rests on the rib cage and thus moves with the rib cage.  Do you need to work on these muscle imbalances?  Absolutely.  However, proper alignment is needed as well and should be assessed first.

Everyone says “mobility before stability,” right?  Well, I’d like to add to that.  How about this:

Alignment before mobility before stability.

Perform Scapular Exercises Bilaterally

Ah, the old YTWL exercises.  I’ve discussed why I really don’t do a lot of the classic YTWL exercises either prone off the table or on a physioball.  I don’t love the upper trap activity needed to stabilize the head and just don’t feel like you get the proper movement pattern you are looking to achieve.  Perhaps it helps with posture.  I am sure there are pros and cons.

However, and probably more importantly, we don’t really tend to perform movement patterns that invovlve moving your arms like in this fashion.  When was the last time you retracted both arms such as during the T exercise?

If I am looking to strengthen a muscle, I am going to stick to my unilateral prone exercises and focus on strength and motor control.  That is my priority.

Then, when function and movement patterns becomes my next priority, I wonder if it is best to work on reciprocal scapular activities anyway?  Far more often we uses our arms in this fashion – one arms pulls while one arm pushes.  This can be seen in some of our most common activities like walking, jogging, and running as well as unilateral overhead sports like tennis, volleyball, softball, and baseball.  Here is a great example from Northeastern University:

Are there times when you should work your scapulas bilaterally?  Sure.  Just off the top of my mind I would do this in swimmers (expecially for the breast and butterfly strokes) and people that have to push and pull large objects at work all day.  It goes back to specificity of training.

The take home message is that you don’t have to work your scapulas bilaterally, and there is some very clear reasons why you would actually want to do the opposite and work the reciprocal push-pull pattern instead.

I hope this at least stirred some thought and discussion.  There is a time and place for everything, however sometimes there seems to be an overwhelming approach in one direction.  Maybe these 3 myths of scapula exercises will make you stop and think next time your are working on improving scapular strength, what do you think?

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Integrating Upper Cervical Flexion with Postural Exercises

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chin nod with shoulder w exercise

Several weeks ago I published a quick video tip on a variation of the chin tuck exercise, the chin nod exercise.  I received a lot of nice feedback regarding the use of the nod and wanted to share the next phase of the progression, integrated the chin nod into exercises.

Just like any other aspect of our rehabilitation and corrective exercise programs, the ultimate goal should be to groove motor patterns with simple exercises and slowly integrate them into more complex functional movement patterns.  While the chin nod is a great choice to work on upper cervical flexion in those with postural adaptations and an upper body cross syndrome, it is really only a small part of the pattern.

We always talk about strengthening the lower trap and serratus and performing manual therapy on the pecs, subclavius, upper trap, and levator (just to name the big ones…).  The chin nod is also a simple way to set your posture prior to some of these activities.

As an example, I shot a quick clip on integrated the chin nod into the shoulder W exercise, which is fantastic for posterior cuff and lower trap strengthening, as well as opening up the anterior shoulder.  By adding the chin nod prior to performing the exercise, you essentially enhance the outcomes of the exercise by assuring proper alignment.

This isn’t rocket science, but by integrating the chin nod into exercises like this, it really helps groove the correct motor pattern better.  Incidentally, this is one of my favorite exercises for those with cervicogenic headaches and neck pain.  Have them sit up tall in the car at red lights and perform this exercise.  Great, even without Theraband.  I even use this integrated chin nod and shoulder W exercise as my breaks while sitting at the computer!

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