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

The new challenge - to improve posture

The New Challenge

Following on from the running challenge I set myself earlier this year, I've now set myself a six-week upper body challenge. I'm actually halfway through the six weeks, so I thought it was high time I write about it!

The exercises I've given myself are low intensity with the focus on correct set-up and positioning. There are eight in total but I wanted to talk about one in particular as I find it quite challenging and would be interested to hear other people's experience with it.

I am aiming to complete 30 repetitions of each of the eight exercises, once a day, for at least five days of the week if not more. I'll keep you updated with how I get along.

The shoulder W-exercise

The set-up (see photo below):

• Gently squeeze the shoulder blades together
• Chin tucked in
• Holding the theraband at hip height initially, move the hands out and away from each other so this increases the tension on the band

Once set-up - keep the tension between shoulder blades and with the theraband

Action:

• Raise and lower the arms to shoulder height.

Starting position - squeeze shoulder blades and pull theraband so there's tension there

Keep everything on tension and raise the arms up to shoulder height

Sounds easy? Try it and find out...and then let me know!

What not do to..

Below is a suggestion of what not to do...rounded shoulder and head forwards. Watch out for setting yourself up correctly, mirrors can help with this or have someone watch your set-up and give verbal feedback. Photos and videos using phones can be helpful too.

Poor position of shoulder and head too far forwards

When teaching this in the clinic setting I tend to find the shoulder blade squeeze eases off pretty much immediately when the arms start to raise up. This I find is one of the hard parts to the exercise, yet one of the reasons to continue doing the exercise. If the shoulder blade muscles switch off that easily it's telling us that they're weak and likely not doing the job they should do (keeping the shoulder blades together and so keeping us in a more upright position).

For myself, it wasn't the muscles not working around the shoulder blades that was an issue, I actually found I was using muscles that didn't need to work. The muscles at the front of my neck seemed to be overworking, quite a lot it seemed. Which means I'm activating my neck muscles to help me lift and lower my arms?!

I also found that my shoulders raised up (as if I was shrugging them) the higher my arms were raised. 

If I had carried on repeating the exercise, despite getting increased neck muscle and shoulder activation, I would be reinforcing a poor movement pattern and building on the neck and shoulder muscles (which I don't want). The reason for doing the exercise are to target the muscles in between and around the shoulder blades, to help improve my posture (which I do want)

So, what to do...?

The Solution:

It's always better to do fewer repetitions of quality exercises than lots of repetitions. Sometimes you may need to adapt the exercise to ensure you've kept the quality. 

Using the exercise above as an example, I adapted it by not raising my arms up too high and stopped moving when I noticed any increase in activity of my neck muscles or noticed my shoulders raising - standing in front of a mirror helped with this. Any alterations in muscle activity indicated that I was starting to compensate, which was my cue to stop and return to the start position. Performing the exercise in this way, I have progressed from hardly moving my arms at all to being able to raise them up to my shoulder height.

Images courtesy of E.Arshamian, Physiotherapist and owner/director of Fortitude Physiotherapy