Do This EVERY Day for Better Posture (GUARANTEED!)

JEFF: What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com. Today I want to show you an exercise, a simple thing, that you should do

every

day. I know, it seems like a lot. But it will be really quick and easy and will improve your

posture

. I guarantee it. All you have to do is access a door frame. Now let me ask you a question first. When you wake up in the morning, do you ever find yourself doing

this

? Stretching and feeling good. If you do (and I'm one of them), then it's your lats that are crying out for help.

You're probably thinking "Lats? Are you going to stretch my lats as the main postural element?" Yes, because the lats are one of those overlooked muscles, in terms of their detrimental effect on

posture

when they're tight. What they will do is internally rotate your shoulders. They are internal rotators. When we internally rotate our shoulder we also obtain

this

compensatory thoracic kyphosis. This rounding of our upper back. That's not good. We want to fix that. So the problem with lats is that if we forget about them completely, we can't. The only way to address them is to specifically attack them with a specific stretch because to do so, you will have to raise your arms above your head.

If you think about it, how many times are you doing that? When you sleep, your arms are by your side all night. Unless you sleep like this. You're a strange bird if you do, but if you don't, your arms will be tight all night. That's why you're doing this kind of thing. You don't get that during the day. Maybe you get up because you're like that all day. Get up and do this. Stretch your chest, try to stretch your lower back. But none of this will directly affect your lats unless you learn to deliberately raise your arms above your head.

What we have to do is attack them in a very specific way. I'll do that. I'm going to show you with a muscle marker what we're talking about because when we understand this, it's much easier to conceptualize why we're doing what we do. Jesse? JESÉ: Yes? JEFF: Welcome. JESÉ: Ah. Let's do the introduction? JEFF: Do you need the introduction? It's OK, go ahead. Introduction. JESSE: Very good, perfection. JEFF: Satisfied? JESÉ: Yes. JEFF: Okay. So now, with that being said; What we have to do is get some points. We know that the lat goes up here and the reason it is influenced by the arm is because it attaches to the arm.

So up here on the arm, Jesse, I'm just going to draw a little reference point. So we also know that he has an attachment on the underside of his shoulder blade. The lower edge of the shoulder blade. So when Jesse checks that, now what do we do? We want to take those points and move them away from the other attachment points, which are down here on the iliac crest, which is around the pelvis. You can feel it. And he attaches to all the vertebrae of the thoracic and lower lumbar spine. That is, right in the middle of something called the spinous processes.

Jesse began to map them. So if we have those points of attachment, how would we want to expand them? First of all, before you even do that, do this test for me. Stand like this and raise your arm as high as you can. Don't force it, just lift it as high as you can. What I want to evaluate, and what I want you to see, is how quickly this will work. See here how high your arm reaches above your head. Some people will be able to reach higher than me. But even those will find an improvement in their ability to get more mobility from their lats.

With that said, I have to take my arm and place it here on the frame of this door. Again, I mentioned this door frame because in a previous video, there was something I told you that you would benefit from doing

every

day. I said that hanging it from a door frame or a bar is going to be very beneficial. So, you could add this to that, using that door frame for a different purpose. You take your elbow, lock it in place, raise it as high as you can, and then lock it. As I drop my pelvis down, I'll see that my arm can't really go anywhere. .

If I raise my arm, obviously the point that was on my arm is moving away from these points down here. Also, when I bring my arm up, I get rotation of the scapula. So that lower boundary is moving further and further away from these points down here. So, I kill two birds with one stone. Now, how would I impact and position my pelvis? How could I get further away from these two points? Well, I take this leg that's closest to the wall and I step it behind me, like this. When I do that, you can see that my pelvis has lowered and lowered further and further away from these points up here.

Now, the last thing I have to do is see if I can move those points that were in my column even further away from here. And I can, if I look at the spinous processes here, if I turn my body in that direction, you can see that they're heading in this direction. Farther from the points that are around here. So when you get to this position here, up, drop your pelvis down and then roll toward the wall. I can feel an intense stretch here. The best stretch, I'm going to get on my lats. Now, the best part about this is that I don't stop there.

I don't believe in simply stretching point A further from point B. If we could do something about the quality of the fabric between those points, we would have an even

better

chance of making a change. One of those quick, instant changes I'm talking about. Thus, your posture improves instantly. We can do it because we have our hands free. We can grab the lat in this position and really try to manipulate it back and forth a little bit. I'm really trying to work the fabric. Like I'm cramped in here. What I'm doing by squeezing is, as you can see, I'm making this tight structure a little bit more flexible.

I'm just trying to pressure and manipulate like this. Obviously, it's going to be a lot tighter when I'm already in place on the stretch, but I do it here for 30 to 45 seconds. Again, on both sides. Now, when you step away and go to raise your arm, I expect a big improvement in how high you can raise that arm. What happened? Not only are we getting more flexibility through that lat, but by doing so, we're not getting as much rounded internal rotation that was caused by the tight lat. But then we'll get a release in that tight upper thoracic that was being pulled down like this.

So we instantly become more upright, a lot more mobility in this direction, and it looks so much

better

. Guys, this happens because our body always works as a single kinetic chain. Things that are tight down here can reach up to your fingers if you let them. You need to realize that all of these things are connected and focusing solely on the most important aspects addressed in postural corrections (such as the pectoralis minor) will not necessarily complete the picture. As you just saw, if you don't really address this specifically, there's no way for this to be as flexible as it should be.

So I like to make it a quick thing you do every day. Like I said, 30 or 45 seconds on each side. Once is probably fine. Twice if you really have a problem. That's where we're going, guys. If you're looking for a comprehensive postural improvement video where we talk about some of the other key areas, I'll show you how to do it. We have a video on that and I'll link to it at the end. Shows you how to do this in four steps. In the meantime, if you're looking for a program where we address posture, posture is important.

It prepares us for optimal performance in all of our lifts and has big implications for how we develop our bodies and we need to address them. I do that on all of our shows. I incorporate them directly, as a physiotherapist. All are available at ATHLEANS.com. In the meantime, if you found the video helpful, please leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me know what else you want me to cover and I'll do my best to do it for you in the coming days and weeks. If you haven't already, be sure to hit "subscribe" and turn on notifications so you never miss a video when we publish one.

Alright, guys. See you soon.