Stretching WON’T Fix Forward Head Posture [But THESE exercises will!]

simple neck and chest stretches and exercises like the cobra pose ytas or rose will never fix your forward head posture in this video you're going to discover the two missing links that will allow you to effortlessly maintain good posture all day long [Music] hey what's up coach e here with dr b from precision movement doc how are you doing today i'm doing great thanks uh thanks eric i'm i'm looking forward to uh helping people uh stand a little taller yes that is what we are going to do today and today we're gonna share our approach to forward head posture which is a little bit different than what you might have seen if you've watched other videos on the subject there's a ton of videos on the subject articles and you might be here because you have forward head posture and two of the most common reasons why people want to fix it are aesthetics or pain people have some kind of pain or some kind of problem and we're going to talk about all of that stuff all the different issues that can occur if you have forward head posture and you don't deal with it effectively you know these days why do so many people have forward head posture i think it's i i was noticing the other day i was just standing on the street watching people walk by is the majority of people just had terrible posture like just completely over um and it's almost as bad as like being overweight i think i looked at the stat and more than 50 percent of canadians are overweight or obese so that's the norm these days i agree with you i i tend to notice it when i'm driving and i'm stopped at a start like stoplight and i look at everybody everybody is like this me included so it's my it's my cue to sit up and particularly the way car seats are made yeah which we both have a real problem with don't get us going on that we've talked about so before we get into the exercises um dr b here is going to take you through the anatomy and talk about the structures involved with forward head posture so i'm not sure if you've ever seen the spinal anatomy before but here is a spine on the top we have the bottom of the skull we've got 33 vertebrae attached to the pelvis and the the spine is not just one joint it has multiple joints which are composed of the vertical body multiple discs and little joints at the back called facets and you can see how these little the the yellow here the nerves come out from the spinal cord to supply our muscles there are many different layers of muscles that surround the spine both deep and superficial and the interesting thing about these muscles is that they cross many of the joints so they control not just necessarily the cervical spine which is the upper seven vertebrae but also connect to the thoracic spine which is twelve vertebrae and then our lumbar which is five vertebrae but when we run into difficulty with forward head posture we have an increase in thoracic kyphosis and you can see how this will change the alignment of not only the cervical spine but also the lumbar spine and what happens is the little joints and discs get pinched at the back of the spine and the discs are compressed and as you've heard eric and i talk and many different shows and and videos when we overload a structure often it wears out so having forward head posture uh with increased thoracic kyphosis and cervical lordosis can lead to wear and tear on the discs the nerves and the muscles creating pain so there's quite a bit of research on forward head posture in the literature and dr b is going to give a quick overview of some of the more relevant studies that have recently come out and how they relate to poor dead posture and if you're dealing with that and some of the symptoms that might come about one of the first studies is looking at forward head posture and how it influences the degeneration of the discs in our spine and it shows clearly that if you have forward head posture your spinal discs deteriorate faster so you get arthritis earlier now i don't want you to flip out if you go to the doctor and you have an x-ray and you hear that you have degenerative disc disease this isn't a death sentence really the message for you is you need to correct your posture to change how you're loading your discs and prevent the discs from deteriorating more rapidly another study looks at forward head posture and muscle tension people who have forward head posture tend to have more tension in their muscles around their neck and their shoulder girdle they have more trigger points and more pain you may have experienced this yourself when sitting at your desk that you get pain in your upper trap and go get a massage you feel great but shortly after that two or three days later back at your desk you find that your muscles are tight and you have recurrent trigger points another study looks at the association between migraines and headaches with forward head posture and you may not think about this you have headaches you're taking tylenol you seem to feel better but there there is a distinct association between forward head posture and headaches and this is because those tight muscles that occur because of the poor posture cause pain to radiate from the neck muscles up into your head another condition that i have commonly encountered in my clinical practice is shoulder impingement and forward head posture when a patient has forward head posture it changes the alignment of the shoulder blades and decreases the space for the rotator cuff tendons so the tendons pinch more readily so it's important if you have shoulder impingement symptoms that you correct your forward head posture to alleviate your shoulder impingements and symptoms finally there's a really important influence of forward head posture on breathing when you have forward head posture it decreases the ability of your breathing muscles your diaphragm and the muscles between your ribs to really take in a big breath or inhale and this is really important just for your general health and performance before we get into it there are four main benefits of our approach that we use at precision movement over the most common approaches that you'll find in other videos and other pieces of content number one is that we use all active techniques everything activates muscles and strengthens muscles number two is we prioritize the deep muscles over the superficial muscles and that is key to getting to being able to effortlessly maintain good posture all day long number three is the sequence of the exercises the order of the exercises put it together in a very specific way to get the best effect on the body and number four is that we've got some unique techniques that really you won't find anywhere else so let's get into it so the first technique is called active self myofascial release for the sternocleidomastoid muscle which is right here and this muscle has been found to be strong and hypertrophied in people who have forward head because it works harder and it works more than it needs to so we're going to shut it off with this technique basically you drop your chin to your shoulder and then you grab in that muscle on that side with your fingers it's right about under behind the ear and then you look and draw a diagonal with your chin up as you slide your fingers down and this is the muscle you can kind of see it popping out there that's the muscle we're targeting so it's chin to the armpit draw a diagonal up and away and even kind of push the chin up and that will help to release that muscle and shut it off so duck let me give it a give it a whirl there sure head to my armpit yeah chin to the armpit there fingers in that muscle and you can work around you don't have to be right on the muscle perfectly just you're gonna work around that general area just don't choke yourself when you do it and you drive the chin up at a diagonal as the fingers go down that muscle and if you have trigger points there this is going to help to release those trigger points it's going to lengthen that muscle and it's going to shut that muscle off so that it doesn't overwork and it will release and the deeper muscles can do the work this is what we're talking about the sequence of exercises we're doing this first and then the next exercise is going to help to activate the muscles properly so for this we're not going to go through the full round but you do it one minute on each side both sides and then you move on to the next technique which is the supine chin tuck so the supine chin tuck you're getting down to the ground for this one lying down and basically you want to get a long spine and all you want to think about is rotating the chin down you don't want to think about lifting the head up because this is just bad forward head posture you want to think about just looking down at your belly bringing the chin towards your neck rotating it downwards this way and if you could lift a piece of paper between your head and the ground that's as high as you need to lift your head off the ground that's it just a piece of paper slide it in the other point is keep your mouth closed and the tongue at the roof of your mouth that helps to give an anchor point to these deep cervical muscles so they can do the job so for this technique you're gonna do holds of five seconds so you start off good posture nice and long and then it's very simple you can't see much going on but it's just chin goes down that way mouth is closed tongue is at the roof of your mouth and the head just comes up just a millimeter a little bit so you could slide a piece of paper you hold it for five seconds make sure you're breathing naturally remember expanding the ribcage as you breathe and release gradually don't just flop down to the ground so you activate you're getting deep muscles in the front of the neck here working hold it for five seconds and then gradually release and for this technique do a couple more reps here doc do about five repetitions for this so how's that feeling there you know it's um it's interesting eric i think it's a i really feel quite a bit of tension along the back of my neck i feel the front muscles activating which is what we want when i first started doing this technique i found that i got some discomfort in the fascia and the muscles at the back because that tissue was so short and as i was pulling on it and lengthening it it became a little bit irritated and i got a headache and so i just want to warn people that you could have a headache for 24 to 48 hours if you go a little too hard with it and i think it's important to gradually go into the contraction so the next technique is the segmental thoracic mobilization and for this you can use either a roller or a peanut ball i'm going to demo here first i'm going to use the roller i like the roll or the the peanut ball better but if you don't have one a foam normal foam roller is completely fine so this one we want to work the thoracic spine so from around the mid-back to around the bottom of the neck just think about that area and i like to aim for about five different areas so you start off we can start off low on the thoracic spine and from here you're going to extend over and then flex back up and we're gonna do that motion three times and then at the bottom you're gonna do a side bend keeping your spine glued on the ball or the roller so side bend three times side to side nice and slow so you're activating the muscles you're mobilizing the joints and you're ensuring that they can move and that'll allow them to reposition themselves when you do the next exercise so you do three side bends and then you move the ball up a little bit and then you do the same thing again doing that about five times five different areas working the whole spine i guess depends how tall you are we're both about six feet tall so we're gonna do about five areas but you know if you're only in four foot four maybe that's only four areas so dog's turning the peanut ball over underneath the lower thoracic spine and she's rolling it do some flexion extensions and then side bending just some movements but make sure that they're nice and slow very slow very controlled so that the muscles are on you're not just using momentum to move around here and then you move to another area and do the same thing some flexion some extensions over top you could do a little bit of rolling to relax the superficial muscles the extensors there and some side bends and then you move on to the next area and this is where you know this is an active technique you're not just sitting over the roller so we're getting some muscle activation which is going to help us to maintain this good posture this more extension in through the t-spine and length through the spine in general and then we're going to really make it stick within the next exercise and this we call the thoracic spine extension ere ere stands for end range expansion this is where we want to improve mobility and make it stick so for this technique i've got another video here on youtube if you search for our channel for hunchback you'll find that where i go into more depth into just this exercise but basically you start off four point position hands under the shoulders knees under the hips and you start off an extension of the spine so stick the butt out extend everything elbows are straight and then segment by segments starting at the pelvis you tuck the pelvis posterior pelvic tilt then you flex the lumbar spine but then you keep the t-spine the thoracic spine extended maintain the extension in the thoracic spine and then flex the cervical spine look down but keep the extension in the stencils of the thoracic spine and you'll hold that for anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds and then you slowly release back into the start position into extension and then you go again the goal here is to feel the muscles close to the spine in the thoracic area working here those are the multifidus and those are key to being able to maintain good posture all day long so doc let's coach through a couple reps here a couple cycles so straight elbows yep good alignment so start off in extension full extension looking up it's really exaggerating the extension and then this is the area we're trying to work in extension so we're going to tuck the tail first and then flex the lumbar spine keep this area extended good that looks good there hold that keep this area on and then tuck the chin flex the cervical spine keep this area on so this extension stays on and because this stuff is pulling it down and this stuff is pulling it down it causes these muscles to work harder to maintain the extension to not just fall into flexion because the other segments around it are in flexion so you hold it while you're breathing and then when you're done 10 to 20 seconds of good activation strong activation you go back to the start position back into extension yep elbows are straight i like scapula protracted so scapula away from each other not pinched back together that helps get the deep muscles fired up more and then you start off tucking the pelvis flexing the lumbar spine keeping this stuff extended don't flex any of this area the thoracic spine and then chin tuck keep this extended yep and the more you tuck the chin and the more you flex the lumbar the harder this has to work to maintain the extension the more strength you'll build and the easier it will be to hold a good upright posture all day so this is a really really powerful technique and it can be difficult to get at first especially because these muscles they're often shut off and they haven't been working for for a long long time in most people the last exercise is one of our kind of patented techniques it's a dissociation technique and it's dissociation of shoulder flexion with lumbar extension so oftentimes when we flex our shoulders this is the movement of shoulder flexion we will hyper extend the spine to try to get more range what we want to do with this technique is we start here and we start in the hyper extended position already and from here you flex the lum lumbar spine as you lift the arms up and do the movement of shoulder flexion at the top you hold and i'm still trying to activate get my arms up overhead and still activating tucking my pelvis and flexing the lumbar spine and also turning the t-spine extensors on to get tall through the t-spine so this is going to help if you have those shoulder impingement problems going to help with that but it's also going to help to ingrain this good alignment into a movement pattern that we use every day if we're reaching out in the cupboard if you're playing tennis serving we're using this all the time so duck let's let's see how it looks here so start off really extended in through the especially the lumbar spine anterior pelvic tilt yep and then as you lift the arms up overhead you tuck the pelvis and think of flexing the lumbar spine from about here to here keeping the chin tucked keeping extended through the t-spine here hold that keep trying to drive the arms back keep trying to tuck the pelvis under and engage the abs to flex the lumbar spine and you breathe you hold that for about five seconds or one to two slow breaths and then bring it down under control reverse the motion basically so go back to extension and anterior pelvic tilt and then you repeat so back up as you lift the arms you tuck the posteriorly tilt the pelvis flex the lumbar spine keep the t-spine extensors on keep the chin tucked so we're working that good alignment with the arms up overhead and we're helping to ingrain and solidify good posture into our neuromuscular system and then bring it down so there you have the five exercises that will help you to fix your forward head posture and keep those good results that you get so thanks for joining us today here on youtube we have we always have a blast making these videos for you and we love sharing things that we know are going to help you and we've got a couple more things that we think can help you even further than this video first is the rom coach app and the rom coach app you can pull up this video or this routine the five exercise that you learned in the app that has really short one minute high quality videos with pointers of all the important key cues to do the exercises properly and more than that you also get scheduling features where you can add the routine to your calendar and get notifications because it's most important to be consistent you're not going to get results if you're not consistent with the routine and you're also going to get progression inside the routine so your reps are going to change over time as you complete the routine over the four or six week period that you have it scheduled for so you can download that app for free just follow the links up above or in the description and get it on your phone and start with the app the second thing is for the old school it's the pdf cheat sheet so we've got the same routine images and bullet points in a pdf that you can download and it's super helpful for those of you who are old school or if you're going off the grid and you don't have internet you can follow this routine no problem wherever you are in the woods so follow it at least two to three times a week for two weeks and by that point because you'll be feeling better you'll want to stick with it so that is it for today thank you for watching the video with us and joining us today if you did like it make sure you like and subscribe and we hope to see you next time thanks everybody for joining us and i've got to say i'm grateful for this exercise plan took me a little while before my muscles kind of activated again but i'm grateful so is my spine and my shoulders you

Channel: Precision Movement

Views: 2,993,087

Keywords: mobility, stretches, exercises, routines, programs, injuries, forward head posture, forward head, posture exercises, physical therapy, forward head posture exercises, how to fix forward head posture, how to fix bad posture, forward head posture correction, forward head posture fix, text neck exercises, neck pain, slumped posture, bad posture, pain, Dr. Erin Boynton, Eric Wong, Precision Movement, correct posture, neck hump, posture, fhp, fhp exercises, posture correction exercises

Id: _-KNO3GE0l4

Length: 22min 27sec (1347 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021