How To Fix Forward Head Posture - 3 Easy Exercises (From a Chiropractor)

[Music] hi my name is dr. David Oliver McAra prac there and today what we're gonna talk to you about is forward head posture forward head posture is basically anytime you take your head and it gets moved in front of your body it's an abnormal posture that we see in people it's probably the number one postural distortion I see with my patients and there's a really good reason for this it's what we all do in society nowadays sitting in front of computers driving our cars texting on our phones all of those activities involve focusing on something in front of you and anytime your body focuses on something in front of it the tendency is to move forward so if we're looking at a computer screen your body is going to want to move or get closer to that object and then when we're texting which is super common nowadays we have this position again your head is in front of your body so that's that forward head posture the reason this is so problematic is the mount your head waist most heads on average weigh 10 to 14 pounds now if you extrapolate that take that into real-world situations think of a bowling ball most bowling balls are on the high end ten to fourteen pounds so you take that bowling ball and stick it on top of your body something's gonna have to keep that up there so basically the muscles in your upper back and neck your ligaments two joints your spine have to maintain that position so your head doesn't flop down hit in the chest so if we move that object in front of our body it actually causes that more stress they've done Studies on it and through gravitational forces every inch your body your head moves forward it gains ten pounds move it two inches forward three inches forward you could be up to 30 to 34 pounds of pressure that needs to be absorbed by those muscles and those ligaments you know we palpate around and you feel around anybody in this area right here and you do it to yourself right now you're gonna probably feel some kind of bumpy knotty things up there that's not the way that's supposed to be the reason you're having that is because those muscles have been under high load for extended periods of time for years now so you're gonna develop adhesions you're gonna develop trigger points in those muscles which can be felt all the way down into the mid so even the low back the other area that can be affected is the actual spine itself so the joints of the spine are the bony portions of the spine can now become more degenerative over time so you're placing more stress on the spine over time the spine naturally degenerates but if you put the spine you put the head more importantly in a different position it puts more pressure into these joints eventually that's gonna start to lead to wear and tear so degenerative changes if you do that enough there's also a thing between the vertebra the discs of the spine which can become problematic as well you know you've heard of bulged discs herniated discs these are very common and very problematic for people so that anterior head position can really cause abnormal stress on those discs and eventually lead to wear and tear and this is something that we see very often in my office and is something I prefer not to see but there's easy ways to address this and fix this all right so let's go through three exercises we can use to try to correct this forward head posture and these postural distortions we see in people the first one we're gonna go through is called a chin tuck basically if you turn to the side you're gonna take the head it typically isn't that forward head position well we're just going to reverse it we're just gonna bring it back some people this is actually a very hard thing to do but essentially all we're gonna do is we're gonna tuck butch in backwards it's an abnormal motion repeat for people and it feels weird and some people don't even have great range of motion when they do it so what we'll have people start out doing is taking two fingers placing it on their chin and they're gently going to push backwards okay you're gonna go as far as you feel comfortable if this causes any abnormal pain in your neck or any emeral pain anywhere else this is not a good exercise for you and you should not do it but we're just trying to accentuate or trying to get that chin to go backwards to get your body more comfortable being in that position initially it might just feel awkward and a little bit uncomfortable or achy that's totally normal because your body's not used to that you've spent so much time with your head in this position getting it back to a normal position here is not gonna feel great for you so this exercise generally there's two ways to do it we can do repetitions or we can do hold so you can just sit there and work on if you're using your fingers push them back nice and slow repetitions 10 to 15 is usually a good number as you get comfortable with it you want to take your fingers away you want to learn to be able to do that motion yourself so what you should essentially feel is some packing in the front of your neck it gets kind of tight and then you might feel a little bit of stretched discomfort in this upper back and it's up on this in this upper neck here which is totally normal so 10 to 15 times in the reps or you can do holds so you can sit here and you can hold the position for up to 10 seconds and you can just repeat that 5 times this is an easy exercise I give this to all my patients with any upper back or neck dysfunction that are qualified for it the the reason I like is cuz you can do it anywhere most people I tell them to do it in the car when they get to a traffic light when you get to a red light sit there bang out ten of them and then go on you can do that several times a day you can even do it in your office some people don't feel comfortable doing that but you know it's better than having neck pain isn't it alright so the second exercise we're going to do is actually gonna be targeted at the upper back and the neck you know when people have that forward head posture it's not just the head that typically comes forward it's actually the shoulders that come forward as well so as the head moves forward we tend to round into it especially when we're typing and we're working on computers or texting or driving everything nowadays is in front of us so our shoulders actually start to come forward so on our back side our shoulder blades which sit on our back tend to come rounded forward a little bit on most people so what we want to do is we want to work on an exercise to bring those back into a more neutral position and then at the same time work on keeping our head in a nice neutral stable position so it's called the W exercise so the reason it's called the W is because you're gonna start with your arms bent at the side like this so you're in the shape of W so you're simply gonna take your shoulder blades on your back and you're gonna squeeze them together and down so my shoulder blades are on my back I'm bringing them together and down the analogy for most people is feel like you're tucking your shoulder blades in your back pocket it's really important with this exercise that you don't overdo it you're not sitting there trying to squeeze your shoulder blades as hard as possible that is actually going to bring your shoulders up which is the opposite of what we want to do so if I'm gonna spin around I'm gonna show you what it looks like from the backside so if we're here with the W position you're gently gonna bring your shoulders together and down again you're not jamming them together here it's just the gentle squeeze together you should feel this motion distraction go on in that mid-back at the same time it's really important to pay attention to your head position most people as they do this move that head forward just like we don't want to do right so you want to get that head in a nice neutral tucked position like we showed you an exercise one and then at the same time a gentle squeeze between those shoulder blades with this exercise you're gonna hold you're gonna hold five seconds and then you're gonna repeat five times so again we're working on bringing those shoulder blades together and down slightly and we can hold good five second hold and relax and you're gonna do it again you're gonna tuck and squeeze the shoulders it's a very small movement that you see in the mid-back and the shoulder blades and relax so the third exercise we're gonna do is a good combination exercise it takes in pieces of the first and second exercise and it expands on that even further it's called the Y wlt exercise so for letters it's basically going to describe the positions we're going to be in - so you're gonna essentially start with your arms up into a big Y position so nice and tall arms you're gonna make sure you're not shrugged up you're gonna be relaxed in your shoulders you're gonna make sure your head again is not coming forward you're gonna keep that head in a nice neutral position so up in this Y position you're gonna expand your hands and you're gonna pull your arms back as far as you feel comfortable you should feel nice strong stretch through your your chest here and into your arms and even into your hands so we're gonna sit in that position for two big belly breaths so you're gonna want to breathe in nice and deep breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth so we're gonna sit there two breaths good from that position where to go from the Y we're gonna drop down into a W so we did the W already so we're just combining this one into this third exercise right here so again elbows down to the side now we're really expanding opening that chest up you want to feel that strong stretch you want to feel it through your mid-back - Beth's again from there we're gonna drop down to the L this is usually the most aggressive stretch we feel with this we're really gonna pinch our elbows to our side we want to make sure we get those guys down and you almost want a picture you got someone behind you grabbing your thumbs and pulling them together you want to feel a good strong squeeze in between these shoulder blades you're making sure as you do this you're not rising up you're keeping your shoulders nice and relaxed and you're keeping your head in a good neutral position so again two breaths of that one and then we're gonna shoot out to the T position so straight arms right out we're spreading those fingers we're open to chest up we're keeping our shoulders relaxed we're not letting them shrug up and we're keeping that head nice and neutral for another two counts so two breaths so in through your nose through your mouth and we're to do that twice so that's the Y wlt so you will live taller however you want to remember it is good for me but those are good posture break exercises do this several times a day it'll help open your chest up help keep your head in a good neutral position and it'll help combat some of that stressful forward head posture you're doing it to yourself every day all right we hope you enjoyed this video and if you'd like us to send you a PDF of some of the most effective exercises to fix forward head posture we'll send it to your email all you need to do is click on a link somewhere here on the video or there's going to be a link in the description below if you're watching on YouTube and we'll send you that PDF right away otherwise please like and share this video if you enjoyed it and make sure to check out our website back intelligence calm [Music]

Channel: Back Intelligence

Views: 4,114,867

Rating: 4.9390836 out of 5

Keywords: forward head posture, fwd head posture, forward head correction, chiropractor, forward head posture exercises, forward neck, forward head

Id: 6C-wfV27bzI

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 18 2018

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