Exercises for Posture - Take Tension off the Neck

Dr. Neil King: Hi, I am Dr. Neil King, founder of King Chiropractic. We are continuing with how to do dynamic exercise for posture. The next set of exercises, I am going to give you are going to be designed to loosen up your neck and your upper back and also interestingly enough strengthen the deep muscles of your neck to give that area stability.

The last exercise, I am going to give you is going to be designed to pull shoulders back even more and break up some adhesions that might you having in your shoulder, that lots of people have that have bad posture.

Here is the first exercise. I am going to demonstrate this from the front and then I will turn around so, you can see what it looks like from behind. I like to call it, a three or two part exercise and here is how you do it. You take your hand, we are going to start with our right hand. You are going to grasp it from behind and gently pull down on that arm.

When you pull down on that arm, it will allow your shoulder, then all I want you to do is stretch your head away from the arm that you are pulling down. So, in another words, we are going to pull, and then we are going to lean, one, two and three and relax, pull back down, one, two, three and relax. You are going to do that 5 times on each side.

Now, did you notice, how I did the one side. All five, then I am going to go and do the other side. When I do the other side, I ll turn around and show you. So, I am going to do left arm now, and I ll pull the left arm down to lower my shoulder, then I am leaning my head away, one, two, three and I am going to relax that. Then I am going to do it again, one, two, three and I relax that, that s five time on each side. That frees up the area of your neck and your upper back right through here, where a lot of people, have of a lot of tension through what we called the trapezius muscle. The next exercise, I am going to give you is actually going to be a strengthening exercise for the deep muscles in your neck, and here is how you do it. You take your hands, do not clasp them, you are going to take them like this, put them on the back of your skull lightly and all I want you to do is slowly pinch shoulder blades together while you push your head back.

So, I ll show you that in another angle. You are going to pinch those shoulder blades together, you are going to push your head back. One, two, three and relax. Let s do it from the side now, scapula pinch, pinch the shoulder blades together, one, two, three and relax and we will do it this way. Scapula pinch together, one, two, three and relax and you are going to five of those. What a lot of people do wrong with this exercise is that they clasp their hands tightly together. We don t want that because then what they do is they put their hands by in their head like this and it's way too much tension and stress on your head. so, we don t want that, we want you to be like this and to pull your shoulders back.

Secondly, when they go back, they go back. I don t want you to arch your head back, I want you to just slide it back lightly, just like that. One more quick exercise for this segment. Here is what you are going to do, you need to find a wall where you can take your hand in this position. Now, notice I am taking my hand in front and rotate it so, you are actually opening up your palm. When you do that, I want your hand rotated, and then what you are going to do is, is take your other hand and just kind of open up and rotate, one, two, three and relax. One, two, three and relax. Let me do the other side for you. You rotate the hand, you put it in position, you take the opposite hand, you are going to rotate it out, one, two ,three and relax, one, two, three and relax. Do that five times on each side. That s an exercise we give top flight amateur and professional athletes, to develop pulling their shoulders back and stabilizing what s called the rotator cup, the muscles up in the shoulder region. So, that s wraps up that segment. The next segment, we are going talking about, is going to be working on stabilizing the lower body, some exercises we will be giving you.