Hello everybody and welcome to this week’s fitness blog post! It’s been a while since I’ve posted a fitness-related blog (over a month, actually), so I thought it’d be nice to write about something that all of us can relate to- stretching and mobility. 

Over the past few weeks I’ve worked with clients and family members to help them increase their range of motion and flexibility and one area that seems to come up time and again is the shoulders and chest connection. 

Now, there are a few reasons this area tightens up and maybe you’ll find one of those below applies to you. At the bottom of this list you’ll find a link to my YouTube channel where I’ve posted a few videos to help mitigate this problem going forward. I’ll be uploading an 18 minute guided yoga flow this Thursday specifically targeting the chest and shoulders so stay tuned :)

1. Compromised posture. There’s a phenomenon going around aptly referred to as “text neck.” When we use our cell phones, whether it’s standing, walking or while seated, the shape of our spine changes and we begin to slouch. This position de-engages our core muscles and puts strain on our neck and upper back. The next time you are on your phone try to remind yourself to straighten your spine and bring your phone to eye level.

2. Tightness from sitting/ working at a desk most of the day. Another culprit of a tight neck and shoulder area is sitting slouched at a desk during the day. Whenever sitting try to remember to engage your core muscles by straightening your spine, looking straight ahead and breathing into your belly. Also, try to keep the amount of time you stay seated short. One option would be to take breaks in order to walk and circulate the blood through the legs every 20 minutes or so.

3. Sleeping: side sleeper vs back sleeper vs belly sleeper. This one might be slightly harder to correct as we are often not in control of the position we sleep in, because we are sleeping, duh :) But just knowing how you sleep may help you understand if/why you have more stiffness on one side of your body. Then you can go about correcting it with gentle stretching and exercise.

4. Overuse (repeated movements on one part). This is quite a common reason active people have muscle soreness or tightness. If you practice a sport regularly (i.e. tennis, soccer, volleyball, etc.), then your body is accustomed to moving in a certain way repeatedly. If you fall into this category, make sure to devote some extra time post-training to any areas that you worked thoroughly.

5. Neglect. Unfortunately this is perhaps the most common factor on this list as it pertains to muscle stiffness. Life moves quickly and there are so many things to keep track of (i.e. work, friends, family, general life maintenance) that our flexibility can too often fall to the back burner. I encourage you all to make time each day, even just 10 minutes, to stretch and move your body. This, much like neglecting your mobility routine, will compound over time and allow you to stay limber into your later years.

With that being said, in order to help you all stay mobile and flexible, I’ve put together a few videos that you can follow to help stretch into these tight areas. As I mentioned above, I’ll be posting a follow along flow this Thursday that you can do any time of day :)

link to my youtube channel

I’ve also made a guided flow for the hips and legs that you all can find here. If you all like these kinds of videos and would be interested in seeing more focused on specific areas, just let me know down below and I’ll see what I can put together :)

Thanks so much for stopping by this week and I’ll see you here next week for a fresh blog!

xoxo,

Alexandra