Hi, my name is dr David: Oliver, I’m a chiropractor, and today what we’re going to talk to you about is 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 at any 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 amount your head weighs. Most heads on average weigh 10 to 14 pounds.
Now, if you would extrapolate that and take that into a real-world situation, think of a bowling ball, most bowling balls are on the high end 10 to 14 pounds. So you take that bowling ball and stick it on top of your body. Something is going to have to keep that up there. So basically the muscles in your upper back and neck, your ligaments, and the joints of your spine, have to maintain that position. So your head doesn’t flop down 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, move forward. It gains 10 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 if you palpate around you feel around anybody in this area right here and you do it to yourself right now, you’re going to probably feel some kind of bumpy naughty things up there. That’s not the way.
Grab the PDF of 5 exercises to fix your fwd head posture now: https://goo.gl/CscGfh Dr Oliver, Chiropractor, will provide you with 3 easy to do forward head posture exercises that you can do from anywhere. Do these exercises every day to help bring your posture into the right alignment. Check out our article on this topic: https://backintelligence.com/how-to-f… Visit our website: https://goo.gl/NCtj8W
That’s supposed to be the reason you’re having that is that those muscles have been under high load for extended periods of time. For years now so you’re going to develop adhesions you’re going to feel trigger points in those muscles which can be felt all the way down into the mid to even the low back. The other area that can be affected is the actual spine itself, so the joints of the spine or 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 on these joints. Eventually, that’s going to start to lead to wear and tear so degenerative changes.
If you do that enough, there’s also a thing between the vertebrae, the disc of the spine, which can become problematic as well. You know you’ve heard of bulge discs and herniated discs. These are very common and very problematic for people, so that anterior, head position can really cause abnormal stress. Those discs can eventually lead to wear and tear, and this is something that we see very often in my office and it’s something I prefer not to see. But there are easy ways to address this and fix this all right.
So, let’s go through three exercises. We can use it to try to correct this forward head posture and these postural distortions we see in people the first one we’re going to go through is called the chin. Tuck, basically, if you turn to the side, you’re going to take the head typically in that forward head position. Well, we’re just going to reverse it, we’re just going to bring it back to some people. This is actually a very hard thing to do, but essentially all we’re going to do is we’re going to tuck the chin backwards.
It’s an abnormal motion for people and it feels weird and some people don’t even have a great range of motion when they do it. So what we’ll have people start out doing is taking two fingers, placing them on their chin and they’re gently going to push backwards. Okay, you’re going to go as far as you feel comfortable. If this causes any abnormal pain in your neck or any admiral 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 going to feel great for you, so exercise generally there are two ways to do it. We can do repetitions or we can do holds so you can just sit there and work on if you’re, using your fingers, pushing 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 stretch. Discomfort in this upper back and this up on this in this upper neck here, which is totally normal so 10 to 15 times on 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 five times this is an easy exercise. I give this to all my patients with any upper back or neck dysfunction that are qualified f,or it uh the reason I like it is, because you can do it anywhere for most people.
I tell them what to do in the car when they get to a traffic light. When you get to a red light, sit there, bang out 10 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 going to 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 backside, our shoulder blades, which sit on our back, tend to come round 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 that you’re going to start with your arms bent at the side like this so you’re in the shape of a w, so you’re simply going to take your shoulder. Blades on your back and you’re, going to 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 feeling 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 going to spin around and show you what it looks like from the back side, so if we’re here with the w position, you’re gently going to bring your shoulders together and down again you’re, not jamming them together. Here, it’s just a gentle squeeze together. You should feel this motion this contraction goes 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 their heads 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 in exercise one and then at the same time, a gentle squeeze between those shoulder blades. With this exercise, you’re going to hold five seconds and then you’re, going to repeat it five times so again, we’re working on bringing those shoulder, blades together and down slightly, and we can hold a good five-second hold and relax and you’re going to. Do it again you’re going to tuck and squeeze the shoulders very small movement that you see in the mid-back and the shoulder blades and relax. So the third exercise we’re going to 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 YWLT exercise, so four letters are basically going to describe the positions we’re going to be into so you’re, going to essentially start with your arms up into a big y position. So nice and tall arms you’re going to make sure you’re not shrugged up you’re going to be relaxed in your shoulders. You’re going to make sure your head again is not coming forward you’re going to keep that head in a nice neutral position. So up in this y position, you’re going to expand your hands and you’re going to pull your arms back as far as you feel comfortable, you should feel a nice strong stretch through your chest here and into your arms and even into your hands.
So we’re going to sit in that position for two big belly breaths, so you’re going to want to breathe in nice and deep breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth, so you’re going to sit there with two breaths good from that position. We’re going to go from the y we’re going to 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 two breaths again from there we’re going to drop down to the l. This is usually the most aggressive stretch.
We feel with this we’re really going to 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 grab your thumbs and pull 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 with that one and then we’re going to shoot out to the t position so straight arms right out we’re spreading those fingers, we’re opening the 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 going to do that twice. So that’s the WWLT 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 help combat some of that stressful forward head posture. You’re doing it to yourself every day, all right?
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