Your Place Physical Therapy Posture Series: Part I – The Chin Tuck
How’s Your Posture?
Poor posture is a common source of pain for far too many people. Why is it such an issue? Because of societal trends encouraging positions that are straining and damaging to the human body. These trends include excessive cell phone use, time spent working at computers, driving, watching TV – and the list goes on. These activities promote forward shifting of the head and shoulders. This forward shifting creates an imbalance throughout the muscles, bones and joints in the neck, shoulders and back. This imbalance has shown to be the source of a variety of preventable conditions. These conditions include, but aren’t limited to, headaches, neck pain, lower back pain and rotator cuff problems. Therefore, it is worth your time and effort to learn about and begin practicing proper posture.
What Can You Do To Help Yourself?
A few minutes every day performing some simple physical therapy exercises. This can reduce the risk of developing the conditions associated with abnormal posture. The Your Place PT “Posture Series” is going to include visual and verbal instructions for many of these exercises. It will also include the rationale behind them. That being said – welcome to Part I of the series!
The Chin Tuck
Above is a brief demonstrative video of how to properly perform the exercise known as the “Chin Tuck”. This exercise will improve the strength and endurance of your deep neck flexor muscles. These are muscles commonly affected by poor posture due to the position of the head, neck and shoulders. In this exercise you retract your chin into your neck, straightening the cervical spine and activating those deep neck flexors. Building strength and endurance in this muscle group can reduce onset of headaches, neck stiffness and muscle spasms in the neck and shoulders. You will notice improved ability to perform many activities. This includes driving, computer work or just sitting up for much longer periods of time without any adverse reactions.
It’s So Easy!
You can perform chin tucks throughout the day. No equipment is necessary and people won’t even realize you are exercising! Please feel free to reach out to me via email at frankallen@yourplacept.com or via phone at (904) 537 – 0301. I am happy to discuss any problems you have that may be related to posture. I am absolutely positive that I can help!
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