Take the average person walking around a moderately developed industrial country and you’ll notice something:
Their shoulders are rounded inward.
Take a look at yourself right now as you read these words and maybe you’ll notice something:
Yours Shoulders round inward.
Older kids, teens, adults, athletes, weightlifters, grandmas, moms, dads, students, bartenders, almost anyone. It’s rare to see someone with neutral shoulders – shoulders that stay in their recesses as nature intended, instead of rolling and rounding inwards in constant internal circulation.
Why is this?
Problems with rounding your shoulders
First, let’s explore why round shoulders are bad.
The first principles tell us that our bone structure is ideal and natural. Our natural state is not to rest in the round shoulder position. That is to have neutral shoulders, shoulders that are in their recesses, neither externally nor internally rotated. Simple shoulders to be. Young children tend to have stable and neutral shoulder positions, mainly because they are closer to their natural state and less susceptible to the pitfalls and designs of modern society.
But let’s take a closer look at the issues that arise from round shoulders:
- Promotes a forward tilt of the head, which puts more pressure on your neck, while also reducing your breathing rate and reducing your lung capacity.
- Start pulling the rest of your torso forward—thus, kyphosis is very common among people who are too young to have any business with it.
- When your shoulders are rounded continuously, the upper tendon tends to get pinched into the bony bridge that runs from your collarbone to your shoulder, especially if you’re lifting or squeezing. This can cause pain, wear and tear, and degeneration.
- It’s not attractive. This may not seem important, but it is an important sign. Aesthetics in many respects express use, form and function.
To get a better sense of what round shoulders are doing to your shoulder function, try fully lengthening your shoulder blades (roll your shoulders forward as far as possible by spreading them wide). Now, try lifting your arms directly over your head, as if you were doing an overhead press or setting up a sling pull. You cannot do it comfortably. Your shoulder is out of place. Do the opposite: retract and place your shoulder blades back, then raise your arms overhead. It will be a lot easier. That’s how the right shoulder works.
What causes round shoulders?
Excessive use of laptops and computers
Sitting plus typing plus intense focus on a screen a few inches below and in front of us has created a nation of hunched shoulders, elongated bones, unstable shoulder joints and muscles tense body. It gets worse when you rely on your elbows and forearms to work, because then you’re turning the rounded shoulder position into a resting position — the “baseline” your body expects.
Too much time on the phone
Pick up the phone and look at it. How do you do that? Did you keep it at eye level with the shoulders turned outward or did you keep it at belly level and look down with the shoulders turned/circled in? Now do it for 6 or 8 hours a day.
You may find that one shoulder is more problematic than the other — more forward round than the other, more painful with exercise, stiff on waking. In my experience, this is almost always caused by too much time using the phone from one hand to the other.
Sadness and lack of spirit
This will be controversial, but it’s true in my experience. Sadness, melancholy, lack of direction, and boredom all cause you to “look down” and return to the round shoulder position. And it goes both ways. Being in that regular rounded shoulder position promotes looking down and prevents you from seeing the beauty, looking up and looking ahead, from being able to move towards your goals. You look down and you will come down, both literally and figuratively.
They support each other in a vicious cycle.
Too much push and push, not enough pull
People, especially beginner bodybuilders, tend to focus primarily on the “push” muscles with pushups, chair presses, overhead presses, and dips. The ones you can see in the mirror. The ones you can hit with some quick boost whenever you feel like it. They neglect pull-ups: pull-ups, row-ups, cross-rows, and all sorts of other permutations. Push-ups are easy to do anywhere and they’re effective, but they’re also great at tightening muscles and rounding shoulders without getting enough balance from pull-ups.
Lack of regular exercise
Most people’s shoulders are engorged. They were locked in position. They do not move or explore their natural range of motion.
The fact that the “locked” position is an internally rotated position taking place in front of a computer or smartphone doesn’t help, but the biggest part is immobility. If you move your shoulders through their range of motion throughout the day, it won’t matter if you spend hours in front of the computer. You will get rid of it. It’s the location, not necessarily the location.
Combine the skewed push/pull ratio with the aforementioned computer and phone abuse, and you’ll have a recipe for permanently plump shoulders.
How to fix round shoulders
Intentionally pulling your shoulders back
Set a reminder to check your shoulder position every hour. Are you rounding? Pull your shoulders back. Stay on top of it and it will eventually become unconscious. Now, this doesn’t mean you should overcorrect in the other direction. The ideal scale plane relative to your torso is about 30 degrees. It’s “neutral.” Not flat, not retracting and certainly not rounding forward.
Hanging dead
You will need something to hold on to, such as a branch or a pull-up bar. Grasp the bar, relax, and let the stretch develop slowly, gradually, for three seconds or so. Relax into the cave. This will stretch everything that interacts with the shoulder area — fat, pecs, biceps, and delts — while opening up the space that the connective tissue in your shoulder passes through. Reach your arms out with bids wider than shoulder width when you’re comfortable enough to increase the stretch.
If you feel your breasts stretch, this indicates a tight chest and bad rounding habits. This means you really need to hang. Hang on the bar for at least 5 minutes a day, divided into manageable chunks. More than 5 minutes is fine and can help more.
Pull more than push
While push-ups and squeezes are important for strength and fitness, they also cause you to lean toward your shoulders inwards if you don’t balance with pull-and-pull movements. In my book, you should pull about twice as many times as you push. If you bench 30 total reps, do 60 total rows. If you do 20 reps, aim for 40 bodyweight pull-ups or row-ups. Keep that ratio as close to 2:1 as possible. The balance will accrue over the course of several days, not during the workout.
Using a standing workstation
Standing workstations make it possible for you to stand tall. When standing, you are less likely to lean forward, leaning against the table, elbows and shoulders rolled in.
You can also adjust the height of most workstations so that the computer is closer to eye level so you don’t have to look down all day.
Take frequent breaks from using computers and devices
Part of breaking the deadlock at the root of the round shoulder is not doing things that make you biased about that shoulder position. To some extent, if you’re using a computer or device, your shoulder defaults to an inappropriate position. It’s very hard to get out of, no matter how many times you remind yourself to hold back.
Just stop using devices too much and if you must use them, take regular breaks.
Hold your phone at eye level
This is a simple fix that takes practice. It’s easy and normal to hold the phone at your hip and look down at it. It might feel a bit silly to hold your phone at eye level, but do so as it will prevent your shoulders from rolling inward. If it keeps you from using your phone too often, all the better.
Be physically active with lots of shoulder activities
Throw the ball to your dog or play catch with your child. Throw rocks into the lake. Practice throwing javelin. Swing your arms around like old Chinese ladies taking an early morning walk at the local park. Just move your body and especially move your shoulders throughout their full range of motion.
Take a cue from the children. Kids will run while holding a helicopter in their arms for no reason except that it’s fun. It certainly doesn’t “work.” Or maybe it is?
Exercise shoulder dislocation every day
Take breaks to perform a shoulder dislocation using a flexible rope, a broom handle, a piece of rope, a ribbon, a pet snake, or even a dog leash. Hold both ends with arms straight and locked. Starting at your hips, bring the strap (or whatever you’re using) behind your head until you reach your hip on the other side while keeping your arms straight. At this point, you can go back the way you came and repeat. It can be uncomfortable or “tight”. Just avoid pain, whatever you do.
If all of this sounds like a lot to take in, it really isn’t. Most of these tips for correcting rounded shoulders are mutually supportive and encouraging. Do some, and others become much easier.
Let me know what you think below. If you have any other suggestions or fixes that worked for you, add them in the comments. Caring for people.
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