Chiropractor in Vaughan Shows How to Reduce Rounded Shoulders with Two Key Exercises
Vaughan, ON – Hey, Dr Walter here. So one of the most common postural distortions I see in people and people are actually aware of it themselves is rounded shoulders.
So what happens is the shoulders roll forward like this. From the front it looks like this, the shoulders are rolling forward from the side, like this. This creates that roundness in the back and that forward head position.
So, a couple of things you need to know about rounded shoulders. One, it’s not just a one muscle group problem, it’s a two muscle group problem.
So what that means is that the front chest muscles, the pectorals major muscles in the front, the ones that go from the chest bone to the shoulder area, they’re tightening up causing that curling forward position.
Now the back muscles between the shoulder blades, they’re weakening. So one set of muscles in the back weakend between the shoulder blades and the front ones tighten
These two exercises I’m going to show you will actually train your posture, your frame, to strengthen the weakened muscles and stretch the tight muscles.
So the pectorals muscle is what’s called a tonic muscle type. What happens is they shorten and the middle back muscles, the rhomboids have middle and lower trapezius muscles, they’re called phasic muscles. They weaken so they don’t get stretched out. They get strengthened.
These are two exercises you need to do. So the first one is you want to stretch the tight pect muscles. The best way to do it is grab a door jam like this, put your arm up like that and tilt your body and you’re gonna stretch. So I’m really rotating my body and I’m stretching the pectoralis muscle over here. Arm is up to this, to the ceiling. It feels really good.
If you’re at the gym and you see the people that work out and do a lot of chest presses, they’re all stretching out the pectorals major muscle because if all they’re doing is chest press, then they get this rounded shoulder syndrome.
So how do you stretch that? Like this (see video above). Give that a try. And hold it for 10 seconds.
Sustain the stretch. I feel really good. Stretch in there. Relax and do it three times and then switch sides. Again, just use a door in your house and really rotate. Get that nice stretch in the pectoral muscle. I really feel a stretch from my arm right down to my chest right here and hold that for 10 seconds. Repeat three times.
Now the second part of the exercise is to strengthen the weak muscles. The weak muscles are the middle back muscles. Now I can’t turn around and show you, but basically it’s the muscles between the shoulder blades, the middle trapezius, lower trapezius, and the rhomboids.
Now how do you do that? A couple of different ways, but one way is simple shoulder squeezes, so you just bring your shoulders back, squeeze the shoulder blades together, hold it for one to two seconds.
Squeeze back, so my shoulder blades are coming in like this. They’re squeezing. So squeeze back, hold for one to two seconds and repeat that 10 times or even 20 times.
If you have a tensor band or some kind of stretchy band, tie it to a door knob, and then what you do is you’re going to pull and you’re going to squeeze your shoulder blades together and you have some resistance.
If you’re at the gym, you can use the pulley system, add a little bit of weight, five or 10 pounds and you’re going to pull the weight. You’re going to pull the weight and squeeze the shoulder blades back.
These are two great synergistic exercises for helping improve and reducing that rounded shoulders. The pectorals stretch, stretching the short tonic muscles, and then the shoulder squeezes in the back to strengthen the weak phasic muscles.
Hope you found that useful. Super, super important tips. Give it a try because if you have round shoulders, or know anyone that does, it’s a really bad syndrome to have.
What it does is, it crunches down your muscles in your upper chest. It constricts your breathing and lung capacity, if not enough oxygen gets into your system, people feel low energy through the day, a very shallow breathing which its not good, so by having an open chest and less rounding of the shoulders, this increases that lung capacity, that breathing ability, and It gives you more energy throughout the day. It also looks better to be upright versus having that slouch.
Hope you found that useful. Look out for more tips coming to you.
