In the 21st century, most of us spend a lot of time at a computer, or otherwise functioning in a sitting position, where gravity acts on our structures in an often less than kind way. Not only can sitting put pressure on your low back, but it may affect your upper back, as well.
How can you effectively deal with this? Well, knowledge is power.
What’s worse, because the head is brought down when the spine rounds (due to the fact that they’re connected), your gaze may be re-positioned as well. Then, to pay attention to what you’re doing–i.e., to see your computer screen or watch the road as you drive—you’ll likely pick up your head so that your eyes are once again level with the horizon.
Picking up your head in this way is a quick fix many people do without even realizing it. The problem is that the alignment (of head, neck, shoulders and upper body) that results is neither balanced nor ideal. Instead, you’re likely tightening neck and shoulder muscles unnecessarily and in so doing, bringing on a new problem called forward head posture.
The reason is that muscles (in general) are situated around the joints they power, and they often work in pairs which are called agonists, or prime movers, and antagonists. Agonists and antagonists are designed to work together to provide both movement and stability to their respective joints, as well as regionally. The location of these opposing pairs of muscles tends to face one another around the joint.
But when one of the muscles in the pair gets tight, it may take you out of alignment, making you vulnerable to problems such as postural kyphosis and forward head posture. A good posture exercise program may help you restore lost postural balance by developing both strength and flexibility–so that one does not over- or under-power any of the others.
At the shoulder, the pec minor muscle rolls the shoulder joint in. One end of this muscle attaches onto a bony process emanating from the shoulder blade. From there, the pec minor muscle angles down diagonally, and branches out into finger-like shapes that attach on a few ribs in front. When the pec minor contracts, it brings the ends (at the coracoid process and the bottoms of the 3 finger-like shapes that attach to ribs) towards one another, and this helps to secure the shoulder blade to the back of the ribs. But too much muscle tension in this muscle may result in the shoulders rolling down and in, as well as contribute to a hunched position.
A few exercises to get you started reversing upper body misalignments are a pec stretch and a cervical retraction neck exercise for forward head posture.
