In Part 1 we looked at what is happening with our school and work place habit of being seated most of the day or driving in a seated position for lengthy periods of time. If you haven’t read that post yet here is the link:
https://www.flemingathletics.com/blog
In Part 2 we will investigate one of the upper body problems due to the prolonged usage of
Staring at a Screen/ Typing/ and the worst one TEXTING
I think it is safe to say we can all remember a time sitting at a desk when we became too comfortable and slumped forward - leaning on the desk and jutting our head forward to read the screen. We may also remember such a situation and suddenly it didn’t feel good so we sat up straight, maybe rolled our neck around, and possibly even stretched our arms out. This is important - you need to move and maintain a good posture when not moving.
How many of you have had tight muscles around the base of your neck so bad it gave you a headache? The positions we put ourselves in create bad posture in the neck and shoulders and then the muscles in those areas become overactive and spasm. The neck is also the area that all the nerves that innervate your arms come from, so when the muscles are in spasm, not only can you not turn your neck, but the nerves are being compressed and irritated.
The next part of this problem is since these muscles at the base of your neck are overactive, the muscles that stabilize your shoulder blade are getting turned off and weak! This combination then starts to become a continuous spiral towards neck pain or injury, shoulder pain, or injury and headaches.
The first step is to work on your posture regularly! Every 10-15 minutes check yourself. Are you sitting tall? Are you pinching your shoulder blades back? Are you tucking your chin back and holding your head back over your shoulders?
If you have to sit for prolonged periods of time, good posture will help you get through the day feeling better. Also from Part 1, getting up and walking is an excellent way to move and help correct total body posture.
Here is an easy way to loosen up your neck without using any equipment:
Start with your hands up in the air with a slight tilt forward. Stand straight up with good posture.
Now pull the arms down and back to your sides pinching your shoulder blades down and back. At the same time tilt your head to the opposite side that hurts. If both sides hurt do one 10-15 second hold tilting to the right and then raise your arms and repeat the arm pull down but this time tilt to the left. You can repeat these 10-15 second tilt and holds 2-3 times and then come back to them a couple times an hour if needed.
Look for the upcoming Part 3 when we continue correcting these daily grind upper body problems.
Once you have completed this active stretch, perform the overhead stretch. Hold the overhead stretch for 30 seconds on each side. You can repeat this stretch 2 or 3 times if necessary. Then repeat the arm pull and head tilt active stretch to maximize the relaxation of your upper back and neck muscles.
