Improve your Posture with Wall Slides

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Are you somebody who struggles when they lift their arm up and your shoulder goes straight up into your ear and you're over working your traps? Or maybe you are someone who experiences a lot of tension in those traps all the time or potentially has a hunched position? This is a great exercise to work on strengthening those muscles around the shoulder blades that help pull those shoulders back and again allow us control over the shoulder blade movement. 

So you're going to find a seated position up against a wall and you want to be in the upright posture. So you want your tailbone area up against the wall. Now make sure it's the back of the head not the top against the wall. You kind of want your head centered on the spine - I always tell people that it's kind of like you feel like you’re giving yourself a little bit of a double chin and that's fine! That's what we want to get that head centered on the spine.

Now you want your shoulder blades flat against the wall not forward, so broaden through the collarbone. Imagine you're showing off a pretty little necklace. Now you're going to have to use your abdominals to find that nice upright position to make sure you're not popping those ribs way out. You want  the back of the ribs (a good chunk of them) in contact with the wall as well so we've got that nice posture going here. The ribs are centered and the hips head centered on the spine so we're not popping or slouching.

You're going to bring your arms out to a goal post position, note this is tough for me, it’s hard not to pop the ribs out! Let the ribs take over and lose that abdominal connection so really focus on feeling a little bit of that stretch here. Keep the shoulder blades flat against the wall and don't let the ribs pop and you're just going to glide the arms up. Make sure to keep the hands in contact with the wall and glide them down. Let's go ahead and come all the way down a little bit further and again without popping the ribs. This is the challenge here and it's going to be super hard for some people, especially those  who have a tendency to think an upright posture position that pops their chest way out. This is super good at strengthening all those little muscles around the shoulder blades that are responsible for helping us pull those shoulders back a little bit and keep the work out of our traps and our neck.  

If it's too much for you, try it by laying down on your back and by bringing your arms to the goal post position. Here you can go ahead and bring it out and in. I'll demonstrate that here as well so if you're someone that found that wall glide with keeping the shoulder blades in place without popping the ribs really difficult try it on your back. The same principles apply here and you can lengthen out those legs if you'd like and allow those arms to come back into that goal post position. You're just going to glide up and down and you're really trying to keep those ribs down over the hips so that we're not popping the ribs.

We're focused on that abdominal connection with that scapula stability as we work through the movement. Give it a try let me know how it goes!