Ideally, we wouldn’t be sitting down all day.  I’ve talked before about how sitting can lead to pain and medical complications like Lordosis.  The culprit?  Gravity.  Now, I know it’s hard to sue gravity for some of our problems, so let’s look at something we can adjust: a sedentary lifestyle.

We know that there are myriad complications that can result from a sedentary life, but the fact is that most of our occupations require us to be seated - and at that, for long periods of time.  So this week’s fitness tip offers a few ways we can work on our posture while seated. 

So how can the fitness tip of the week - sitting up straight - really make such an impact on our bodies and our finances?

Gravity and Your Body While Seated

World renown fitness expert Gary Gray emphasizes the importance of meeting the demands of our daily lives, and our first priority is dealing with gravity. If our bodies can’t handle a force pulling on us every moment of every day, then we’re in a bad position.

What suffers?  Primarily the back, shoulders and neck.  Last week, we addressed only one of the conditions that can develop in the back: Lordosis.  Another significant one underlying lordosis is anterior pelvic tilt. Today, however, we’ll discuss the shoulders.

Shoulder Posture

What
The tip this week tells us to bring our shoulders back and down while sitting up straight, from your hips to the top of your neck.  If we don’t maintain good shoulder posture while sitting, we can develop a common postural deficiency called protracted shoulders.  This postural distortion is characterized by tight muscles in the front of the shoulders, which pull the shoulders forward and result in a rounded back.  In other words, the condition is like a permanent forward slouch. 

Who
Office workers are the number one protracted group, and many athletes who spend a good portion of upper body workouts on their chests without stretching their chests or strengthening their backs also exhibit protracted shoulders.

The Consequences of Protracted Shoulders (and then some)

Physical
Protracted shoulders means having a tight set of muscles in the front of the shoulders, particularly in the chest and rotator cuff.  When these muscles tighten, over time the reciprocal muscles - muscles on the other side of the body - are pulled and receive less neural drive from the brain.  That means, to name a few, upper back muscles and posterior shoulder muscles are told to be used less and less by the brain because they don’t get used much.

Shoulder stabilizers, in the rotator cuff, play a huge role in proper shoulder movement.  With protracted shoulders, these stabilizers are not at the proper length and strength they should be to handle even small amounts of weight.  Daily tasks such as picking up a bag that rotator cuff muscles would normally support are instead supported by tight, under-utilized, and weak muscles, ligaments and tendons.  Over time, small movements with postural imbalances can lead to a big ouch, costing us time away from work, emotional frustration, and pain.

Further, depending on the depth of the protracted shoulders, breathing might also be affected.  Given that we breathe 20,000+ times per day, and given that our breathing muscles have attachments to our spines and ribcages, breathing improperly can affect our visceral processes and spinal pressure - which are, in short, essential to living well.

For those of us who aspire to athletic goals, or who have hobbies like dancing or gardening, or who are do-it-yourself repairmen, protracted shoulders and an anterior pelvic tilt or Lordosis pose a major threat to performance.  If simple foundations like our pelvis/back and shoulders are out of whack, we are in no shape to be trying anything out of the ordinary. 

But the good news is that there are some ways to prevent protracted shoulders.  Here’s a great stretch that, performed twice a day for both arms (for a total of two minutes of stretching per day), can help prevent shoulder pain and injury from becoming a serious issue for you.

Emotional
Do you hate waking up with pain in your shoulders or back?  Does it go away, happily, then come back to haunt you?  Doesn’t it get aggravating? 
Pain and injuries resulting from protracted shoulders and anterior pelvic tilt affect your sleep, and therefore, they affect your hormones and recovery, and ultimately, your pleasant disposition and attitude. 

Financial
How expensive does it get to treat pain and injuries in the shoulders?  Very.  Millions of Americans collectively spend billions of dollars to undo the results of a sedentary lifestyle.  Pain and injuries in the lower back, shoulders, and neck account for a large majority of people’s reasons for spending such vast sums.  Taking into account doctor visits, specialist visits, medications, and other related insurance bills, pain and injury in your shoulders are not a good use of your finances.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

The good news is that there are a great deal of stretches and exercises designed to help treat and prevent protracted shoulders so that you can function happily.  In future More of Me to Love fitness blog posts, you can bet there will be more stretches and exercises, but we don’t have the capacity to address them all here.  So what do you do?

Assessing your posture is step one.

Each of us has a unique posture.  To find out if your posture puts you at risk, visit a local orthopedic specialist or personal trainer for an assessment.  They can provide you individualized feedback and make stretching and exercise recommendations that will save you pain, time, and ultimately money, enabling you to function with a smile.

And don’t forget to start doing what’s best: sit up straight whenever you’re sitting!

Happy New Year!

Check out other tips and blogs this week.

Andrew is a Certified Personal Trainer from the National Academy of Sports Medicine. He teaches people to listen to their bodies and helps them thrive as they find the connection between health and happiness.

If you are interested in a free fitness consultation, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), and he will be delighted to teach you how to start enjoying fitness and making it a part of your life.