What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com Whether you're an avid gym goer or you're just
someone trying to live a healthier life, there's one thing that makes us all feel worse than we
actually should, and that is bad posture. If you have a posture that looks like this, that ugly
slumped over posture, well, it's my job to try to help you to fix that today. And the fix for it
could actually be quite simple, provided you know exactly what to do and can do it consistently.
Even though the slump posture is easily identifiable from even your knees all the
way up to your head, the area you want to focus on is actually right here. And it's the thoracic
spine and it's the area that's actually attached to your ribs. And this is the area that we tend
to sort of set the stage for all things bad, because as it starts to round and lose mobility,
it brings everything else along with it. Remember, your body's a kinetic chain, so if the thoracic
spine starts to ram, well, it's going to pull that pelvis down as well. You can actually test
this for yourself, stand up and allow your upper back to round in your shoulders to go forward
and now try to stick your butt out. It's almost impossible unless you have incredibly strong,
low back extenders, which, by the way, most of us do not. So, what we also know is that when
that happens, we lose mobility of the shoulder because as the thoracic spine rounds forward,
the shoulder blade itself comes along with it, protecting around the front of the ribcage.
As it does that, it actually physically blocks the arm from being able to be lifted overhead. So not
only is it limiting your function in day-to-day life, but it's making your workouts a hell of
a lot harder than they should be. If you don't believe me, just do it. Again, get in the slump
forward posture and then raise your arm up as high as you can. You're going to physically get
blocked along the way. If you stand up as tall as you can and raise your arm up, you're going to see
a noticeable difference in your overhead range of motion. And so, like I said, because the spine and
the pelvis are connected, when that spine starts to round, it brings the pelvis along with it. So,
a lot of people think that they have tight glutes that are causing that posterior pelvic tilt when
in reality it's just a consequence of having poor posture that started up above and resonated all
the way down that kinetic chain. So, if I could help you to target the area that's actually at
the source of the problem here and then give you some additional things to do to strengthen
the glutes that maybe you're being faked into thinking or stronger than they actually are. Well,
then we have a good strategy to help you get rid of that slump and at the same time give you a way
to do it that's not going to take you all day. So do me a favor and stand up and try this. Put
your feet along a straight line and then just turn your toes out ever so slightly. And then
from there, I want you to lock your knees out. In other words, extend them fully by contracting your
quads at the same time, squeeze those glutes together. If you've done this right with your
foot positioning on the ground, you should feel a really good contraction here. And then finally,
what I want you to do is make a fist with your thumb just like this, and then put that thumb
alongside your sternum. And all I want you to do is take the knuckles that are now facing
somewhat at an angle downward and point them up by lifting your sternum. Think that you
have a glass of water attached to your sternum and just lift it so that none of it is falling
out the front of the glass. In this position, you're going to feel exactly what it's supposed
to feel like to be in this better posture. And ironically, we fixed the thoracic extension loss
by starting from the ground up. But that's how the kinetic chain works. But of course, you're
not going to walk around like this all the time because we really haven't fixed anything yet.
But if I could give you a quick routine to reinforce these things,
well, that's where the real benefits occur. And by a quick I mean literally just 5 minutes. So,
you've got five exercises, two here for the thoracic area and two for the glutes and then we
have one combo exercise. And the way we structure it, is basically taking those first two A and B
perform them for 30 seconds apiece. Thoracic for 30, glutes for 30, you go back, thoracic for 30,
includes for 30. That's two minutes, you do 30 seconds of the combo exercise. Now if you don't
have a lot of time, you can stop right there. But if you've got two and a half extra minutes, it'll
be well worth your time to do exercises C and D in the same manner. Thoracic for 30 seconds and
glutes, you go back again and repeat that one more time and you finish one more time with that combo
exercise. That's a total of just five minutes. And the first thoracic exercise is one that's
actually going to help us to attack the weakness in the upper back that oftentimes contributes to
that poor posture. We call this one the Superman, and it's very easily performed here down on the
floor. You take your fists, you put them right here on that sternum again. And this time we're
going to try to reveal our S, that's where the Superman comes from, by spreading across the chest
and digging your elbows down into the floor. And if you do this properly, you're going to
feel those muscles between the shoulder blades engage to allow you to lift that sternum up.
And think about the test we just did. Take your hand and think about raising it as high as you
can by lifting the sternum and tilting backwards at the same time. You perform this as repetitions,
as many as you can get that are high quality that you can perform within that 30 second time period.
And then you move on to exercise number two. And this too, can be performed right down here
on the floor. But this time we're shifting our focus to the glutes. So, when we talk
about glute weakness, it's not the absolute level of strength that you're missing here,
but more importantly, your strength endurance. Because when we're talking about posture flaws,
you need to be able to have the ability to control it for a long period of time. So,
the glute march is a great way to do this. You get into this bridge position here,
trying to create a straight line from the thighs all the way down to the torso,
and now you're just going to alternate your foot lift about five or six inches on the left and five
or six inches on the right. But most importantly, without allowing a drop of the pelvis when you
do lift the leg. So not dropping this way and not dropping to one side when you lift the foot up.
The idea, as always, is to make sure you perform quality repetitions for those 30 seconds and when
you're done, you move on to the combo exercise. Now, with 30 seconds of each of those exercises
performed, you're now one minute into the routine. You repeat that combination one
more time and you're two minutes in total. Now, we've performed the 30 seconds, however, of that
combination exercises. This is one of my all-time favorites is a Bridge of Reach Over. So now we're
going to go back to that bridge, but this time reach across and back with the opposite arm.
So, we're getting that thoracic rotation and extension at the same time. We're getting that
lift in activation through the glutes so we can tie in both of these deficits and work on
them all at one time and kind of bring it all together with just this final 30 seconds.
So, the second thoracic exercise actually just requires a chair. You come down here on the
floor and you take your elbows and you put them on top of the chair and your hands are going to go on
the top of your upper back. Now, at this point, your goal is to just sink yourself down, really
trying to lead with your chest. In other words, try to touch your chest to the ground, obviously
being limited by the fact that your elbows are preventing you from going too, too low.
But this is great because it focuses in right on that area that we spoke about earlier. The
key here is to perform these as repetitions as well by lifting up and then again resetting and
dropping the chest down as best you can. The additional benefit that comes from this is
that we're getting a good lat stretch and we know that the lats are also internal
rotators of the shoulder contributing to more of that rounded, hunched posture,
so we're getting a double bang for our buck. Remember, perform high quality repetitions for 30
seconds and move on to the next glute exercise. And that exercise is actually called a Wall DL,
which is utilizing an RDL pattern, but it's helping to strengthen those glutes once again
and establish full hip extension while also reinforcing that thoracic extension that
we're looking for. So, you put your hands up against the wall like this and you drive your
knee up into the wall as well. Now what we're really focusing on is actually this down leg,
because what I want to do at this point is kick my foot backwards to hinge but establish this flex
hip position and then drive off of that utilizing the glute to get through full hip extension. The
only way I'm getting my knee back to the wall is to fully extend through the hip. And again,
full hip extension is good glute activation and by doing that we're fixing the pelvis from below
and helping to reinforce that upper back. And oh, by the way, the upper back is being
reinforced in this position by keeping the hands in contact with the wall, which establishes
the same dip that we had on that chair exercise to keep that extension that we're looking for.
The first time through you go 30 seconds on the right leg and the second time you perform this,
you go 30 seconds on the left leg. Now, remember, after performing these C and
D exercises twice, you've got one 30 second time period left over and that's going to be reserved
once again for that E exercise, the combo bridge and reach over that you're going to do for one
final period of 30 seconds. Guys remember, when it comes to creating meaningful change, the only
way we can get there is through consistency. And the only way I believe we can get consistency is
when the tasks that you're being asked to do is not that daunting. This is short, this is quick,
but I promise you it will be effective. If you're looking for a complete workout
guys that are equally effective and not time consuming. You can find them over
at Athleanx.com. If you find this routine helpful, make sure you leave your comments below. And also,
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miss a video when we put one out. All right, guys, I hope this helps you. See you soon.