“I looked in the mirror and noticed I was turning into an apostrophe.” If this quote describes you; take heart, Rhomboid Strengthening Exercises could be just what you need.
Conservatively, I’d guess 75% of my clients and students have weak rhomboids. Our modern lives featuring hours in front of computers, driving, sitting with poor posture in front of a TV, etc. all contribute to the imbalance where we have overly tight pectoral muscles on the front of our chests plus overly stretched & weak rhomboid muscles between the shoulder blades. Over time, weak rhomboids contribute to poor posture, slumped forward heads and bodies that start looking like apostrophes.
For most of us, the best remedy for poor posture is the combination of stretching our pectoral muscles, then strengthening our rhomboids.
- Begin with the Chest Expansion Stretch; reach both hands behind your back, interlace your fingers and lift your hands away from the hips as far as you can do so while maintaining a straight spine.
- Next, here are the two easy rhomboid strengthening exercises I can recommend for nearly every body: http://www.muscularinjuryspecialist.com/pain-between-the-shoulder-blades.html
- Almost everyone can (and should) do one minute of Chest Expansion Stretched followed by several sets of Shoulder Blade Squeezes daily. Then as long as you don’t have lower back issues, add in the Dart exercise for better results.
Within just a few weeks of adding these 2 or 3 simple exercises to your daily routine, you should notice a difference in your posture. Maybe you’ll notice in the mirror less of an apostrophe and more of an exclamation mark!