Shoulder & Back Slump Begone!
With all the awesome BYOC stuff, Lynne-Marie’s terrific Love Yourself project and January’s stellar daily challenges, I’d bet some of you need some help with the computer schlump in your back and shoulders. Sitting for long periods at a desk can curve your back into a C-shape, weaken those vertical spine muscles, and round your shoulders forward. It’s a recipe for back pain!
What can you do to counter-act the slump?
If you’re at home (you might look a teensy bit strange doing this in an office or cube environment), and you’re confident about your floors, get down on the floor. Or yoga mat. On your stomach. What you do next is usually called a “Superman” exercise. In our case, it’s “Super Girl!”
Now that you’re on your stomach, start out easy. Keep your arms at your sides, crunch up your butt muscles, and arch your legs and head and shoulders up. Try not to let your shoulders tense up! This should all be coming from your butt muscles, with some help from your vertical spine muscles. (doctors, physical therapists and personal trainers call these the erector spinae) As you get better at this exercise, holding yourself up longer and longer, move your arms around to the front, and hit that classic flying superhero pose, and imagine yourself zooming through the air!
If your back muscles are weak from a lot of sitting, it will take some time to build up the strength to hold yourself up.
Shoulders are a little tougher. Rounded shoulders can lead to shoulder pain, bursitis, pinched nerves and rotator cuff injuries depending on your activities.
For the best illustration and demonstrations of how to fix your shoulder position, I highly recommend taking a look through this website, Fix the Neck.
The easiest shoulder exercise, especially for stretching and opening those shoulders up, is to hold your hands behind your back. If that’s hard, touch your fingertips. Go slowly. It takes time! If you can hold your hands behind your back, slowly raise them up and hold. And slowly lower them.
Again, do all this slowly, depending on where you start from. And good luck!
