I tried to fix my bad posture in 25 days

Many of us spend at least eight hours a day sitting down. As work commutes have gotten longer and cell phones have become a common part of daily life, opportunities for bad posture are more frequent than ever. Over time, this can lead to pain in your upper back, shoulders, or neck, cause realignment of joints, or trigger various muscle groups to become inactive or underdeveloped from the lack of engagement. Recently, I've been noticing my own poor posture in some of my previous videos. Leading with my chin, rounding my shoulders forward to relax my upper back. To be honest, I'm not sure all of this is a result of just sitting down for long periods of time. It may also be a result of other bad habits or poor flexibility. But I want to correct these problems now, before they start leading to pain or injury down the road. And in doing this, I want to lay out a blueprint that anyone else who struggles with bad posture can follow as well. So I took some before photos of what my posture looks like standing, sitting, even with my chin tucked back, as if trying to force myself to have good posture. Then I showed these photos to Ian Puri at Range Physiotherapy to try and figure out the cause of my poor posture and see if there's a way I can fix these problems in 30 days or less. There's definitely things you can do to improve it. So the head forward posture, you have to find ways of, okay, how do we correct the neck musculature? So you have the core muscles of the neck. As the day goes on, you get more tired and the posture starts to fold out. So there's a real big thing about neck muscle endurance and the core muscles of the neck. You have your superficial ones and your deep stabilizers, and those are the ones that help keep you upright. On top of that is everything around the shoulder. So if the shoulder girdle is sort of misbalanced substantially, you have a tendency to drop everything forward and that shift in gravity also forces your head forward. So there's a couple different things going on, and we can take a look at what's tight and what's stiff and what's loose and weak and all that kind of stuff. Ian runs me through four mobility exercises to increase range of motion through my shoulders and improve strength and mobility in my rhomboid and upper trap muscles. Over time, these exercises should help pull my scapula back and down, which will fix my tendency to round my shoulders forward and improve vertical posture through my neck. As time goes on, you kind of look at two weeks to start noticing some neurologic changes, three, four weeks for like muscular changes. And around the four to six week mark is, I think when you start taking a picture of yourself sitting in chair noticing a bit of a difference. After my session with Ian, I can begin putting his posture exercises into practice. But while I'm working on these, I've got to keep the lights on. So this video is sponsored by the Cove Commuter 2. It's what I've been using to play music through while I've been doing my posture correcting exercises and my regular workouts as well. In fact, the music you're hearing right now is being played through this device. I found the sound quality and volume is great. And if you want to play music in two rooms at once, all you have to do is twist and you've got high quality music or podcast audio playing in two locations at once. The Cove Commuter 2 connects easily with any Bluetooth device. And if you want to get it for yourself or as a gift for someone else's holiday season, you can get it right now for 67% off through the link below. Now back to my workout. One thing I'm trying to be mindful of with these workouts is making sure I'm targeting and engaging the right muscle groups with each exercise. Because these are movement and body weight exercises, it's easy to cheat the motion. And in which case I won't be correcting my posture, rather just wasting my time by engaging the wrong muscle groups. So far, I think the most effective exercise where I know I'm engaging all the areas of my upper back that I want to be is the wall slide with my chin tucked down. It's important to keep my feet a little bit out from the wall. So my back is straight. My chest pushed forward just a bit and my chin tucked in as if to make a double chin motion. As I go through the motions with my arms applying just a small amount of pressure against the back wall, I can quickly feel my muscles activating. And I'm actually pretty tired after I finished five to eight reps. While these physio exercises are predominantly built around mobility and pain reduction, I also want to work in some exercises to develop my upper back, trapezius and neck muscles. Not simply because all these muscles play an important role in supporting and fostering good posture, but also because I'm getting roasted in the comments for these muscle groups. So congratulations, YouTube. Bullying works. The first exercise I'm adding to target my neck and upper traps is the weighted head extension. I'm doing this from home by lying on a counter with some light weights wrapped in a towel. Doing this, I find, keeps my very sensitive bald head coddled from any pressure points. I also tried the same exercise outdoors using a small resistance band, but I found controlling the movement and the muscles I'm engaging to be a lot easier when I'm lying on a flat surface. Also with my band, I can do face pulls to target my traps, upper back and shoulders, which will hopefully help counter my tendency to round my shoulders forward when I'm in a rested position. And finally, I've added some dumbbell shrugs. This one's not so much for improving posture and more for adding one more exercise to target my traps two to three times a week. Obviously, I'm taking any exercise with my neck a bit more cautiously, but I have been able to increase my weight halfway through the second week. Even though I don't expect my neck and traps are going to be radically redefined by the end of this challenge, I'm already seeing a difference in the way I sit and stand. If your parents ever told you when you were a kid not to frown too much because your face might freeze that way, well, that's pretty much how I assumed posture worked. Too much bad posture when you're young, and that's pretty much how your body's mechanics are going to be for the rest of your life. But our posture is actually incredibly malleable. By just strengthening a few muscle groups and alternating some bad habits, it's possible to see significant change in a very short amount of time. What this also means for me, though, is I need to make some ergonomic changes to the way I work so I don't drift back to old bad habits. So I'm elevating my computer monitor so when I'm working at my desk, my eyes are level with the screen rather than looking down. And whenever I have the chance to do some writing or planning, I'm going to do that standing up, working at the counter or at my island in the kitchen. If I notice my posture is sloppy when I wake up first thing in the morning or after I get in from the cold, I'll do a couple wall slides to activate my neck and upper back to reset my posture for the rest of the day. On day 25, I feel like I've improved significantly with my posture, so I invite Cam over to help with my after photos. Now, on day one, my before photos were taken on my cell phone for convenience sake, so we'll be taking these photos on the same phone to try and keep the two images as consistent as possible. When I compare my day one to day 25, I can see dramatic improvement in my natural neck and shoulder placement. Before, when I was trying to pull my head back, I was actually creating a more pronounced curve in the back of my neck. This was a result of my shoulders rounding forward and trying to course correct by doing this with my neck. I want to be honest for anyone who'd like to apply these exercises to their own life. A lot of my improvement is a result of becoming more aware of my supporting muscles in my neck, shoulders, and back. Then being able to engage and activate those muscles properly to achieve a more vertical posture whenever I'm sitting or standing. Again, I feel like the wall slides were the most effective exercise in helping me strengthen and activate these muscle regions, so I knew how to engage them properly after my sets were finished. My plan is to continue with these exercises for the full six weeks as Ian recommended, and the hope is eventually this posture becomes like second nature. As I'm beginning training for some new calisthenic goals, my hope is having proper posture will help with balance and technique as I pursue more challenging exercises in the future. And I promise I will continue working on my traps and my very skinny neck. So until next time, we had some more requests for set goals and stay swole, so everyone do that until the next video. Thanks for watching.