With more and more people working from home at this moment in time it is important to have a routine to work on your posture which will help to avoid neck, shoulder and back pain.

Getting into the habit of having regular breaks and altering your posture helps massively but it is often overlooked. Something as simple as trying to increase movement variability and general activity by going for a 20-minute walks, doing some strengthening and mobility work (see below) can have a great impact on your physical wellbeing.

Prolonged postures can put certain muscles on stretch, such as the Levator scapulae which can fatigue the muscle causing the feeling of tightness in the shoulder blades and neck. Prolonged postures can reduce blood supply to local nerves, giving you a sensation of discomfort and tightness causing you to react and move to increase blood supply back to the nerve. Once nerves are irritated, they are hard to calm down and it can become an ongoing problem.

Strength and mobility routine

This routine should only take 5-10 minutes, so try and incorporate it into your daily routine to make a real difference

1. Wall Slides – 1 set of 15 reps
This is a great mobility exercise to increase shoulder mobility by opening up your shoulders and stretching your pectoralis minor which is a common muscle that shortens with bad posture.

2. Chin Tucks – 1 set of 20 reps
Chin tucks help to combat forward head posture which can put extra load onto your neck and shoulder muscles.

3. Neck Isometrics – 1 sets of 10 sec holds for each plane of movement
These isometric holds help to strengthen your neck greatly which will help to reduce symptoms such as tightness in your neck and shoulders.

4. Banded pull aparts – 1 set of 20 reps
This exercise helps to open up your shoulders while strengthening your upper back and scapular muscles helping to improve your posture.

Complete 2 rounds of the above exercises

By incorporating this routine, it will help you avoid neck, shoulder and back pain while improving your posture at the same time! Give it a try!

What we can do at SB Sports Massage & Rehabilitation?
The first aim if you are coming to us with the above issues is finding the root cause of your problems by going through a thorough subjective and objective examination to provide you with advice and a personalised treatment program. We see people in our clinics on a daily basis with these issue’s so we are highly experienced in getting you back to full fitness and improving your quality of life.
You can book an appointment online via this link, BOOK HERE or call one of our clinics direct!

Find our previous blog here.

By Ben Hampson GSR BSc (Hons)