An insane growth spurt around 4 years ago left me with slightly protruding shoulders. I really didn’t make much of it since it isn’t really visible through my clothes and no one actually notices.
But it is starting to bug me and I know that if it isn’t corrected it could lead to problems (back, stature) in the future.
I’ve been going to the gym and have been doing bench presses, shoulder presses etc for a couple of months now, and I would just like to ask you guys if you have any suggestions (workouts, stretches or other ideas) for correcting this problem.
Actually, yes. I did something that improved my posture amazingly–I took up fencing. To fence with any effectiveness, one must get the shoulders back, and the guard of classical (19th-century) and modern fencing greatly encourages this.
Earlier forms of historical fencing are too forgiving of a hunched posture to be as useful for this purpose.
My chiropractor has been nudging me to get into the following habit for my posture:
After waking, lay sideways on the bed, on your back. Let your head dangle over the edes of the mattress, so that the curvature of your upper spine is the opposite of when slouching. Watching cats while upside-down is a very entertaining side effect. She also suggested that I start with daily sessions 5 minutes long, working my way up to 15 minutes.
I usually keep the edge of the bed just across the tops of my shoulders. Once I “give in” to the stretch, I can feel it all the way down my spine sometimes.
What exactly do you mean by “protruding”?
Too wide/too far forward/too far backward/winged scapulae?
How serious the problem is depends on what exactly is going on with your shoulders.
Since this is a MB, and since we’re not really going to be able to be very helpful, maybe you should see your doc? Cetainly before doing any really heavy excercise…you could seriously damage yourself if there is something major going on.
Protuding * forward * would be correct. So it gives my back a bit of a “C” shape, just a bit. It doesn’t feel uncomfortable, I’m just curious as to what options I have.
I checked out some pictures of winging scapulae by the way. And, yikes, they look pretty unpleasant.
