Dr. David Koivuranta shows a doorframe stretch for upper back tension caused by computer work, driving, and other forward-facing activities. Stand in a doorway with elbows at 90 degrees, push your chest forward for 10 to 20 seconds, and repeat twice daily to reverse the shortening that builds up during the day.
Chapters
Hey everyone, it's Dr. Dave. What kind of experience are you creating for yourself out there today? You know, we all lead busy lives and many of us go to work or we stay at work here at our homes and we're always doing things. A lot of the things we do every day involve us working with something and it happens in front of us. Very rarely do we work behind us, right? So whether we're at a computer or we're driving or we're using tools or we're a hygienist or a hairstylist or an auto mechanic, a chiropractor, a massage therapist. Many of the things we do every day, even around the home with vacuuming and carrying things and doing dishes, ironing, many of these things are in front of us and we end up engaging in that work and sometimes by the end of the day into the evening we start to notice some soreness. We get tight and tense in that upper back between the shoulder blades and sometimes even up into the neck. So what do we do? A lot of us stretch. We pull that out some more. We pull where we're feeling the discomfort is what we try to stretch out. But the interesting thing is that those parts of our body may actually be overstretched from what we've been doing all day. So a really good thing to do is to stand in a doorframe and put your arms up on the doorframe like you're surrendering, and you can put this shoulder at 90 degrees, the elbows at 90 degrees, you stand in the doorframe and you push your chest forward, not the head and neck, just the chest. Keep the head over the body until you feel that pull in through the top of the chest and into the shoulder. You count, count to 10, 15, or 20, and you relax, shake it off a bit, and then do it a second time. The first time will kind of warm it up. The second time will allow you to go a little bit further into that and just breathe and kind of let that stretch out a bit. And what that's going to do is actually open up this area that's maybe shortened during the day and is pulling or causing the stretch in the back. And when we open that back up again, it's going to take the tension and pressure off that back. And when we do this day after day and we get into the habit of resetting that, we're going to notice less of that discomfort into our upper back and neck. So that's a great tool for you guys to use to keep having those great experiences every day. Keep yourself loose and supple. And we'll share some more tricks with you in the future, so keep your eyes open.
