What's better posture, this, this, or this or
this or this. In this video, I'm going to show you the number one most common postural pattern
we see today, and the one exercise that will fix this posture in less than a hundred seconds.
Stay tuned. This one exercise might be one of the best posture exercises you've ever seen,
and the reason why I'm claiming that is because there's one exercise that can fix three postural
patterns in one shot. One, looking at posture, you have to look at the whole, not the sum of the
individual parts. Just like this video right here where I show you where chin tucks will not fix
forward head posture by themselves. Understanding there is a normal posture is very important in
how we go about fixing alter postural patterns. We need to look at the pelvis, the low back thoracic
spine, and the cervical spine as a unit in order to effectively correct your poor posture patterns.
The most common postural pattern we see is what we call a zigzag postural pattern. That posture where
our pelvis comes forward, our thoracic spine chews back, and then our forward head posture results
in a complete collapse of our upright standing posture. The problem is we create this ourselves.
We sit way too much, and when we sit, we sit with lazy posture. This over time stretches ligaments,
weakens spinal stability muscles, and creates faulty neurological patterns that allow these poor
postural patterns to persist. This will cause our spine to break down prematurely causing a host of
pain and other spinal related problems. We want to avoid that at all costs before doing any posture.
Exercise is really good to warm up your spine, so you make sure that it's mobile, it's warm so
you don't injure yourself. One of the best ways to warm up your spine is with the cat cow, so this
is not the one exercise I'm going to show you. This is the warmup but do this with me. One thing
you want to make sure is when you're doing the cat cow is that you're not trying to extend and flex
to the end range of motion. It's just not worth the chance that you're going to irritate things
and it doesn't make the exercise any better. So, what you want to do is you want to just get
comfortable on all fours. You want to twist your arms and hands into the floor almost like you're
trying to screw them into the floor, really lock out and then you're just going to come in and just
slowly start your flexion and extension and again, don't really force it to the end range. There's
not really any upside to that. What we're trying to do here is just warm up our spine and our
postural muscles so that the exercise I'm going to show you in a few seconds is more effective.
And so, you want to do three sets of about five repetitions. As I said, you don't need a lot.
You just want to get your spine moving and the tissue's ready to perform the exercise
I'm going to show you right now. Okay, we're going to start the exercise now. This
exercise is called the Titanic Posture exercise, and you're going to learn very quickly why that
is. We do need a piece of equipment for this. The best thing to use would be a yoga block. Now, I
know most people don't have a yoga block. If you want, there's a link in a description below so you
can find one of these things, but you don't need this specifically. You could use a pool noodle,
you could use a small couch pillow or sofa pillow, or you can use a folded towel. Three to four
inches thick will be perfect, whatever you have. You're going to start the exercise with your feet
off the wall about two to three inches, and you're going to place this in your thoracic spine, just
in the middle part of your back. Today, my choice is going to be the yoga block just because I have
one and it's easy to hold against the wall. So, what we're going to do is take whatever you're
using, pool noodle, towel, folded towel, small pillow, yoga block, anything that will keep your
pelvis off of the wall. First thing we're going to do is we're going to reverse the posture. So,
we're going to take our pelvis and we're going to rotate as far as we can. Hopefully, we can get our
glutes or our butt to the wall. The second part of the movement where the Titanic comes in, arms up
and squeeze your shoulders and hands back against the wall. The final thing, we're going to take our
head slightly extend and then pull it back against the wall. We're going to hold this for 10 seconds.
And relax. The reason why I said you can fix this in a hundred seconds or less is because
we're going to do 10 sets of 10 seconds. Now, some of you might only be able to hold up for two
or three seconds, or your mobility might be such that you can only get slight extension or slight
rotation in the pelvis. That's okay. Work to your tolerance, and I can assure you when you do this
daily, you're going to get better and better. So, let's do it again. Remember the first part
is the pelvis, butt to the floor, or sorry, butt to the wall. Then we're going to take our
arms and squeeze our shoulders together, push our arms hands back into the wall, and then finally
slight extension and pull our head back and hold. So, it's really squeezing. It's actually quite
difficult to perform. Sometimes I make this look easy, but it's really difficult and relax. You
know it's difficult because you're firing so many muscles. As we look at the spine as a whole,
and we're trying to undo multiple faulty postural patterns at the same time. In this one exercise,
start doing this daily for 10 seconds at 10 reps, and I know you're going to notice a
difference. One final tip to make this exercise more effective and your postural change
to be more permanent is you have to watch how you sit. Watch this. We typically start off with
really good posture, and as the day goes on, we slouch and we shift forward and we create
the very posture we're trying to change, sitting with good posture. We start to slouch,
create this rolled back, this comes forward and our head, and that is our sitting posture.
How we fix that is with support here. By trying to increase the curve, everything else will follow,
and so we need to have support in this lower back when we're sitting. Simply put a pillow there to
help support your spine. It'll make the exercise that just shows you way more effective and your
posture change way more permanent. If we have a back on our chair or we're sitting on a sofa
couch, just make sure you place that pillow to make sure that you're unable to roll forward.
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If you have a question or comment, please leave it down below. And if you have an idea for a
future video, leave that there. I'll add it to my list and hopefully get to that video very soon
as you see it on my YouTube channel. I appreciate you taking the time to tune into this video. Be
sure to check out some of the other videos I have on my channel, as you might find them. Very
helpful as well. Until next time, stay well.