You know that achy feeling you get between your shoulder blades after you are sitting at the computer for a while? For most people that feeling is fatigue from coming from the muscles responsible for maintaining posture in our upper back. You see, the majority of our weight is carried in front of our spine so it’s constantly requiring our upper back muscles to engage and keep us up straight. If we engage the muscles of the upper back we can be nice and straight like this (look how happy he is!):
However, if we relax those muscles this happens (see the image above on the right side).
Again, this is because we have more of our weight in front of our spine than behind it. If this position feels familiar, it’s because it’s probably what you look like when you’ve been working on your computer for about 10 minutes. Our bodies are very good at keeping our posture straight but were not designed for holding a single position for very long. So in order to help your body work an 8-10 hour day and feel better, you need to due to things: 1) Give those muscles a break and 2) build endurance in those muscles.
The following exercises accomplish both and you can do them at your desk in about 90 seconds!
Exercise 1: Sit up nice and straight and grasp the band about shoulder-width apart.
While keeping your arms straight, pull the ends of the band in the opposite direction until your arms are out like this:
Exercise 2: Place the bad on the ground and step on the middle of the band with your feet. Lean slightly forward. Then, while keeping your elbows straight, pull your arms backward creating tension in the band.
We hope these help light a little spark of exercises that you can do frequently during your breaks throughout the day and during the workweek.