Upper body six-week challenge

Update on the upper body challenge...

I started a six-week challenge mid-April for upper body exercises and wrote about it here. I am pleased to say that I've now successfully completed the six weeks, although will come clean and admit that I did have a few odd days where I wasn't able to do the set of exercises (where does time go to some days?!)

At the end of the six weeks I now feel I'm sitting up straighter and my posture has improved in general. However, I also feel that as with most things, this is a work in progress - I would definitely benefit from a few more weeks of the exercises and perhaps make them slightly harder exercises. There are a few ways to measure posture, none of them great, but one of the simpler things to do is place your back against a wall and see if your head, shoulders and low back touch it. I found this article explains how to do this fairly well.

Which exercises were used?

Read on to find out..

Shoulder-W exercise

I discussed the shoulder-W exercise in my previous post. I definitely found this one the most difficult due to weak lower traps and overuse of my neck muscles. I found with time and repetitions I could move my arms more with less visual use of neck muscles. This one is definitely a work in progress as I believe I've had years of over-using neck muscles and have generally been quite weak in my shoulders.

Scapula (shoulder blade) setting

• Gently squeeze the shoulder blades together - keep this tension throughout
• Hold the theraband shoulder width apart, move hands away from each other so the band goes on tension - keep this tension throughout
• Action is to move the arms up to shoulder height and return to the start position

Reps = 3 x 10

Sounds easy? Try it and find out

When teaching this in the clinic setting I tend to find the shoulder blade squeeze eases off when the arms start to raise up. I also tend to find with the shoulder blade squeeze the shoulders will also raise up, which will put too much tension on those upper muscles.

As discussed above, I find when I perform the exercises that my neck muscles over-work as I lift my shoulders up, so another point to watch out for.

Below is a suggestion of what not to do...rounded shoulder and head forwards. Watch out for setting yourself up correctly - it's always better to do less repetitions of quality exercises rather than more repetitions in the wrong position.

Chest stretch with theraband

• Start with the theraband around your rib cage, holding both ends
• Gently squeeze the shoulder blades together - keep this tension throughout (are you noticing a theme with this?)
• Keeping the shoulder blade squeeze, straighten your arms and then bring them out wide. Return to the start position

Reps = 3 x 10

Shoulder external rotation with theraband or small hand weight

  

• Lay down with one arm hanging over the side of the bed/plinth, placing a rolled up towel under the upper part of the arm so it's well supported. Hold onto a small weight - I used 1kg
• Keep the upper arm still, move your hand up so the forearm is parallel to your body
• Return to the start position 

Reps = 3 x 10

Below is what the position would look like without a towel to rest the upper arm on - it causes the shoulder girdle to become too rounded.

Shoulder shrugs

• Lay down with your back resting on the bed, lifting your hips up to the ceiling
• Arms are pointing straight up to the ceiling, holding onto a light weight (I used 1kg)
• Keeping the elbow straight, move the whole arm up towards the ceiling (the shoulder of the side being moved will come away from the support)
• Return to the start position

Reps = 3 x 10 times

Thoracic extension with foam roller

• Lay down with the roller along your spine, arms out to the side
• You can feel a lovely shoulder stretch with this
• Stay there around 5 minutes

So there you have it, the exercises I've been doing for the past six weeks. As you can see I started off with very light weights, this was to ensure I was doing the correct technique and working on the smaller, endurance muscles. I'm giving myself a break from the challenge, but may return to the exercises later and increase the weights used.

Thanks for reading!

Photos courtesy of E. Arshamian, Director and physio of Fortitude Physio