Ok, back with more on the shoulder issues ...

Some more key points:

We always hear about doing the right things in the gym, but what we're doing outside of the gym is arguably just as, if not more, important. Think about it. How long do you train? An hour? Contrast that to the other 23 hours of the day. Your body is going to adapt to what you do most often. For example, if you have a sit down/desk/computer job, you're going to have postural adaptations that are going to influence everything discussed in the previous blog post. Tissues can adapt in as little as 15-20 minutes so if you fall into the above category (I do), a good recommendation (courtesy of Bill Hartman again) is to take what he calls, 'postural correction breaks'. Bill recommends this be done approximately every 15 minutes where you're consciously correcting your posture. For example, all you have to do is either sit or stand as tall as possible. What this does is it helps to reposition everything closer to optimal alignment.

So, you desk jockeys. Sit up ... at least every 15 minutes or so. This is going to impact on the overall health of your shoulder arguably more than your gym warm up, your exercise selection, again because of how much more time you spend outside the gym .. potentially at a computer like me. :lol:

I've been forcing myself to do this pretty regularly. But it's easy to forget so I simply use a timer on my watch and set it for 15 minutes and every time it goes off, I take my little posture correction break. Adding to the 'sit tall' recommendation I also, with my arms hanging down at my sides, externally rotate my arms so that my palms are facing forward. So your shoulders will go both down and slightly back. You'll feel a nice contraction in your scapular retractors as well. So what this ends up doing, and it's a good thing, is help to shorten the lengthened muscles on the back side and lengthen the shortened muscles on the front side.

Gotta go. Time for a postural correction break. :lol:

Posted Jun 06, 2008 by Erik Ledin.
This entry is filed under Training.