Fixing My Horrible Posture

 I read the "Neanderthals No More" articles here and really shed some light on how bad my posture is. It seems my posture is pretty horrible. I have kyphosis and a series case of where my head is forward and putting the massive strain on my neck. I started realizing that and have started the workout plan on the Neanderthal article yesterday.

For a week, I been doing wall shoulder stretches and so on. The problem is, ever since I been straightening out my round shoulder, my neck was still hunched forward badly and now my neck kills at the back and my traps are as stiff as a rock.

I try to push my head in by keeping the chin straight and pushing my head back, but due to the stiffness, I cant hold it long. And the stiffness seems to be not going away, would it go away as I do the better posture program and my posture gets better?

Try stretching out your thoracic spine. Do it the way they describe on this site or use a towel starting just below the shoulder blades and working your way up the t-spine with your arms hugging yourself to move the scapulae.

Neanderthal No More was one of the first articles I read on T-Nation, and I was really psyched to try it out and fix my posture. The problem is, the series involves a lot of anatomy and objective self-analysis that might be difficult for a beginner.

In my opinion, it is not a “program” for beginners. It deals with structural imbalances caused by muscle imbalances, among other things, not simply poor posture.

Now, I don’t know what your background is, but seeing that you just joined T-Nation this month, I will assume you are a beginner. For all I know, you have been reading the site for years.

But if you are a beginner, you might do better with just following a basic routine that focuses on overall body development and helps you learn the major lifts. By all means, incorporate the stretching techniques you’ve picked up - they are important to range of motion and general health.

Combining compound lifts with stretching and a good diet will probably do more for you than trying to analyze how your body is misaligned and then fix it with specific movements from the Neanderthal articles.

See Vroom’s Beginner’s thread in this forum. And try sitting up straight - focus on your posture when you are sitting and standing and see how far that will take you.