Come on, you've tried it. You tried chin
tucks to help correct forward head posture and it hasn't worked. In fact, if you do any
single stretch or single exercise to try to fix this posture, it's not going to work. In
this video, I'm going to show you how to fix forward head posture in three simple exercises. My name is Dr. Jon Saunders, and in 18 years of
practice, I've never seen more people with forward head posture in my entire career. Now we know
it's very common, but just because it's common, doesn't mean it's normal. Lots of people have
high blood pressure and high cholesterol. It is still an abnormal clinical finding. Some
people will present with forward head posture and have no complaints at all, no pain, no symptoms,
but others present with associated symptoms, everything from neck pain, to headaches,
to a pinched nerve going down your arm, to balance issues, to dizziness, to fogginess. I even see people struggling to heal from a lumbar
disc bulge or herniation because their posture is so forward, compressing the bottom discs. We
were never meant to sit for 8 to 10 hours a day having gravity work on us, pushing us more forward
and more forward. This can be devastating to our spinal health. I want to take a minute to explain
the most common cause of forward head posture. And it's not a problem in the neck. So gravity
is constantly acting on us. We've assumed poor postural habits. We don't move enough.
Our muscles weaken, our ligaments lengthen and we have poor spinal alignment. The first
thing that happens, we assume a lazy posture, this allows our thoracic spine to start to shift
forward, without even addressing the neck. You can see as your thoracic, as you see hunch forward,
your spine shifts forward jetting your head out, what happens then is your neck needs to compensate
and it goes into hyperextension, really firing your suboccipitals just underneath the base of
your skull. You're going to find this gets really tight. And then finally, what happens is you would
assume a posterior pelvic tilt, a loss of curve in the lower back, to assume this posture. The
primary we need to correct is right here. If we can fix this spot, this will help correct the
other areas in the spine that are compensating for the poor thoracic posture. We call that thoracic
hyper kyphosis or increased flexion through the mid back. What I'm going to show you is how to fix
this area to help fix that forward head posture and those associated symptoms. I would like you
to visualize mirror image. And what does mirror image mean? It means trying to take this posture
and move it in the exact opposite direction. Mirror image in terms of the strengthening
of the muscles, the ligaments stretch, and the neuromuscular coordination or activation is
essential to fixing this faulty postural pattern. And finally, if you have any symptoms associated
with your forward head posture, like a pinched nerve, dizziness, headaches, this is something you
should consult a professional with. They're in a position to provide you with more specific care
and testing to make sure the correction happens as efficiently and safely as possible. Now remember
a single stretch or a single exercise of a single muscle group will not work to fix forward head
posture. These movements that are going to show you these three simple exercises are going
to be movements that involve many muscles, joints, and ligaments. What you're going to
need for this one. You're gonna need a small towel or a face cloth just for some
padding. And what we're going to do is we're going to really visualize and think about
that mirror image exercise, or that mirror image position, the opposite of this position.
So we're going to take our small little towel or face cloth when we're going to get
against the wall and we're gonna hold it there. So think about the first thing you want
to do is let's pull our shoulders back. Let's get our shoulders back. And if your head's off
the wall, you're going to find that you have to pull it up. And as you pull it back and you
might want to extend your head because your suboccipitals are tight. What you want to do
is you want to make sure you tuck your chin and you pull your chin down and back into the
face cloth. So again, chest up shoulders back, chin tuck, and what we're going to do, just this
position might be difficult to get your head where it needs to be, but this is the right position.
And you need to take a few steps out. And then what we're going to do to fire those muscles,
we're going to actually pull and pull our chin towards the wall. We want our head over top of
our shoulders, over top of her hips, nice position chest up. And we want to hold this position for 2
to 3 minutes. And for some of you, this might be difficult, but start off slow 5, 10, 15 seconds,
whatever you can do, hold your shoulders back, pull them down, really take your chin and pull it
in and use this as leverage to fire those muscles. You can really feel it deep in the muscles,
in the neck and at your suboccipital area. You will also feel it in your trapezius muscles.
The other thing you really want to be aware when you're doing this is because often this posture
involves a posterior pelvic tilt. When you're in the position, basically what you want to do to
alleviate this is to mirror image it, extend your glutes just a little bit in this position. And
again, tuck, you want to try to keep that nice and straight in the right alignment. That exercise
is probably one of the best exercises you can do, to help that hunched forward posture or that
forward head posture. For the next exercise we're going to do a scapular placing exercise,
but we're going to put an emphasis in our middle part of our back. And please stay tuned to the
end because I'm gonna give you a couple of tips to help you continue to maintain your proper posture
in day to day life. For this exercise, we're going to get on our stomachs or we're going to lie
prone. We're gonna place our hands behind us. We want to take our chin and tuck it and hold right
away. You should feel this in your middle traps. We're going to pull our shoulders back and elevate
them off of our, off the floor or a table. And we're going to pull our shoulders down with a
chin tuck. We're gonna hold this for 10 seconds, and thenwe're going to rest.
We're going to chin tuck, shoulders back, plus down, point
to our toes so to speak and hold, and relax. So for this exercise, you can do this
10 sets a day and holding for 10 to 15 seconds, really focused on pulling your shoulders back,
talking to your chin, extending your thoracic spine to really work all the areas of the faulty
posture pattern In a mirror image position. And now for the final exercise or movement. This
is an area where I find a lot of people actually do quite well with the exercise's trying
to fix their posture, but they often forget about another tissue. Ligaments. Ligaments
are what gives our spine stability. The problem is if your spine is out of
alignment for a long period of time, the ligaments tighten up around that new position.
So they need to be stretched and they need to be stretched slowly. There's a phenomenon
called ligament creep. And what that means essentially is over a period of time,
the ligaments will slowly creep or stretch. The problem is it takes them at least at minimum
five minutes for them to get started. And up to 15 to 20 minutes, to get them to their full
length. We need to stretch the ligaments to allow the exercises to help
hold your posture in the correct form. So for this traction or stretch, you
can use either a pool noodle, a rolled towel, a foam roller, if you have it. But what we're
going to do a little bit differently here is we're going to focus on our mid thoracic spine to
mirror image that faulty, lazy postural pattern that we all have. So take your towel or your
pool noodle. We're going to get this between our shoulder blades. That's where we want it.
It might take a bit of maneuvering to get it in the right spot, but once you feel that your
thoracic cage or your rib cage open up, you know you're in the right spot. To start to make
it easy we might want to keep your legs bent, but then you're going to extend over top, just
like this, let your shoulders roll out. That feels really good. You can keep, keep your arms out
to the side If you want a little more stretch. You need to stay in this position for a
minimum 5 minutes, but you can do this up to 15 to 20 minutes a day. For some of you that want
to help with the neck curve. What you can do is you can kind of edge back. You can either
put a towel under your neck, a smaller towel, or if you're on the edge of a bed, you can kind
of just kind of edge back and get your head slightly extended off as well. Open again, open
up the shoulders, think happy, healthy thoughts. It's a nice time to relax, push the stress out
of your head and just relax into the stretch. If you've completed these two exercises and
the thoracic traction with me already, you're going to feel better. You're going to be breathing
better. You're going to probably have more energy. You're going to feel like you're more upright
and your day is just going to be better. If you do those two exercises and that last stretch
I showed you I know if you do that every day, you will notice a difference in your forward head
posture and hunched forward posture within 30 days. So I'm going to leave you with three final
tips to help prevent your posture from relapsing back into that old routine and to prevent future
problems from happening. The first thing you need to do is to make sure, and this will take some
practice, that you're breathing through your belly and not that tight chest, stressful breathing. The
more you breathe through your belly, it natural allows you to stand up more straight, take more
oxygen and be less stressed through your day. The second thing for those that
sit for eight to 10 hours a day, put a reminder on your phone. Every 30 minutes,
have an alarm go off just to remind you to get up, get a glass of water, move around, breaking your
faulty, postural pattern, your sustained positions and just the fact that you're under gravity, every
30 minutes or so will go a long way in helping you maintain the posture you desire. And finally,
when you are moving around your day, when you're exercising, you're on a treadmill, you're doing
weights. Think one simple thing. Take your sternum and make sure it's pointing up. Don't let your
sternum point down. Don't think of anything except for your sternum. When you're walking,
when you're exercising on a treadmill, running, keep that sternum to the sky and it will help
maintain proper posture. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you have a question
about anything I showed you, or you need some clarification, put it in the comment section below
I will answer that question for you. And finally, maybe you'll consider subscribing to my
channel. If you like the content I'm putting out. Thanks for tuning in and I can't wait to
see you on my next video until then stay well.
