Andy learns to release tight shoulders caused by slouching. A foam roller breaks down tension in the upper trapezius, followed by a 15-20 second stretch with the arm behind the back and head tilted away to lengthen the shoulder and ease neck pain.
I'm here with Andy today. We're going to talk about tight trapezius and tight shoulders. Okay, so oftentimes what happens is we get really tight up in here and that can lead to neck pain, maybe headaches, sometimes tension headaches happen. What we want to do is talk about why the muscle gets tight and then how to loosen it up. So basically with Andy, you can see that right now he's nice and relaxed, but what happens is when you get up and you start to slouch, if you're sitting at a desk, if you're driving, If you're walking in this kind of posture, we'll turn Andy to the side. You can actually see that his shoulders roll a little bit forward. When they roll forward, Andy, I'm going to have you actually over-exaggerate that just a little bit, and you can actually tell that this shoulder comes up just a little bit, which means this muscle got shorter and it gets tight. So then when we try to stand up and we try to use the arms, this muscle is so tight that we can't actually get the length that we need. So we want to talk about how to loosen that up and stretch it out. Okay? So what we're going to use is our foam roller. I'm going to have Andy come over here to the wall. And we're gonna face so the side of you is to the wall. This is gonna go right here on top of that spot. You're just gonna lean right into it. The further away you pull your feet from the wall, the more tension you're gonna put into that. Now, Andy, let's make sure we're on top of the shoulder and not in the neck. Okay. Right here. There we go. So you can see him at an angle putting all his weight right into that and really starts to break down that tissue that's all tightened up in there. You can move around a little bit. It's not a huge range of motion. You don't really want to go too much into the neck. You want to stay more on top of the shoulder area. Okay, so we do that. You want to make sure that the arm you're using here is just nice and relaxed. If you want to use the other arm to control it, you can hold on to the roller there if you're having a hard time keeping it in position. Now after we've done that, then we're going to stretch it out. So come on off of there, Andy. Go ahead and put your roller down. That arm that you just worked on, you're going to go ahead and put that behind you. Just like so. You're going to tilt your head away from there and take your other hand, put it on top of your head here, and just let the weight of your arm open that up. Hold that for about 15 to 20 seconds, and after that's all said and done, you should feel a lot looser there. You might even be standing up a little bit taller. I hope you found that interesting. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I'd be happy to answer them. And if you haven't already, please subscribe. I post new updates every Friday. And if you want to see more of what I do, check out my website at www.beyondfitnessonline.com. And until next time, live healthy.
Stop Stretching Your Neck. Try This Instead (It Might Improve Your Vision Too)
