Improve Your Posture With This 30 Days Challenge
Nowadays, we are connected to our gadgets, we stay at our desks lots of
hours. There are many people who work in an office 9 to 5, and every one
of them complain of the same problem: Desk Posture. That bad office
posture we all get if we stay to many hours in front of the PC.
But the good news is that you can get a better posture, just by getting
up from your desk and performing this amazing Office Friendly 30 Days
Posture Challenge
Great posture is made of many different parts which recruit a lot of
different muscle groups throughout the body, some of which are required to
multi-task in their roles. The Posture Challenge has only two, seemingly
simple exercises. To understand how they help improve your posture
consider what is required for a good posture to begin with:
- A strong neck and shoulders
- A strong back
- A strong lower back
It is, of course a little more complicated than that as flexibility as
well as strength are involved and the front of the body needs to be
brought into the picture as well, but the Posture Challenge is simple in
what it asks you to do. It targets primarily all the key muscle groups
that are not easy to target consistently and by the end of it you will see
a difference.
Just so you understand what muscles you are exercising consider that in
the neck and upper back consider that anchoring the shoulder blades to the
spine is a flat, triangular shaped muscle called the trapezius. This
muscle covers the neck, shoulders and thorax. Effective posture
necessitates that the trapezius muscle is strengthened equally in the
front and back of the body.
On the lower back there are those muscles on the back side of the body
which run laterally to the spine, called the erector spinae muscles.
Individually, they are the spinalis, longissimus and iliocostalis and they
all work together to extend the spine. The multifidus muscles, a smaller
group deep in the back, connects the vertebra.
Finally the tail end of the posture support structures are the gluteus
and hamstring muscles. Even the hamstrings play a role as they indirectly
work to maintain an erect posture during standing and walking.
The side to side movement may be simple but in a slightly modified format
it is practiced by martial artists, boxers and MMA fighters because it
challenges the lateral abs and also helps strengthen the muscles on either
side of the lower back (called the Thoracolumbar Fascia).
Then the chest expansions with the arms thrown back while held at
shoulder height brings many of the muscles of the upper back into play
and, as the upper body moves back but is held in place by the lower body
so you do not overbalance, it also challenges the core, abs, pelvic girdle
tendons and lower back (again).
Practiced regularly all these muscles are given a workout which helps
them become stronger, take more and more of the load of the spine and hold
the body upright.
