One of the most crucial keys to successful progress in your fitness journey, is body alignment. The body rely’s on posture to perform exercises in the correct planes of movement and to activate the right muscles for the exercise, however with poor posture the body can easily get injured and incorrect performance of an exercise will occur as a result which will impede your fitness gains. There is however, a prevention tool to help prevent this poor body alignment through posture exercises, which are commonly avoided or forgotten for no good reason. In this post we will go over 5 posture exercises we believe you should be incorporating into your training sessions and over time you will notice a significant improvement performance, you can thank us later.
1. Scarecrow
Frequency: Repeat for 12 reps.
Holding two light dumbbells with an overhand grip and with the elbows at a 90 degree angle. Perform this exercise in a standing, then rotate the shoulders to bring the dumbbells from the waist to ear level and continue to repeat this motion.
Each rep will strengthen your rotator cuffs and improve the stabilizing muscle groups for your bench press. Shoulder posture will also straighten out which will help to avoid inevitable shoulder pain during pressing motions.
2. Swimmers
Frequency: Repeat for 12 reps.
Begin lying prone on the floor with arms staright above the head, arch the lower back slightly which will raise the upper body and arms off of the ground. Then rotate the arms backwards to bring them down to your hips, touch, and return to starting position. Repeat to simulate a somewhat swimming motion.
This exercise will losen the upper and lower back muscles to prepare for any pulling motion, it will also open up the chest and rotator cuffs which should be lose for better performance during pulling motions.
3. External rotations
Frequency: Repeat for 12 reps.
Holding two light dumbbells with an underhand grip in a seated or standing positions, bend elbows at 90 degrees bringing dumbbells in front of you and to waist level, this is the starting position. Now rotate the shoulders outwards to bring the dumbbells to either side of your waist and repeat.
4. Wall slides
Lean against a wall with all points of the back touching the wall, place elbows at shoulder level touching the wall and rotate shoulders back to get the wrists and back of the hands touching wall. Now gently slide your upwards overhead without breaking any points of contact, maintain neutral breathing throughout.
This exercise will help losen thoracic spine mobility and correct rounding of the shoulders which is very common for heavy lifters, perform this exercise prior to a push day and you will notice a signiicant improvement in mobility and posture over time.
5. Halos
Hold a single weight with both hands to your chest, pull your shoulder blades back and down, away from your ears. Now rotate the weight over and around your head in a circle, returning it back to your chest, remember to keep your head upright and your neck neutral.
This will help to improve shoulder mobility and stability, improving shoulder girdle performance by losening the joint. Cab be performed with any weight, but best perfromed with a kettle bell upside down.
Thankyou for reading this post, we hope you find these exercises useful and effective in helping to improve your mobility and posture, perform them regularly and you will notice a significnat improvement. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out our previous posts on our blog page. Or if you are interested in becoming a personal trainer, please check our main page for course information.
Written by Daniyal Siddiqui.