When it comes to fitness and health all the way to how people will judge your physical appearance, posture is critical. With all of the use of computers nowadays it’s not uncommon to have a forward head posture which looks terrible on men and women. The reason why it looks terrible is because the muscles are not in the right places. Unfortunately, there are many activities that lend themselves to the forward head posture such a biking and other day to day tasks.
Luckily, the way to solve this isn’t as hard as you may think. It will take a lot of awareness and hard work but you will be rewarded with better posture. The first drill that I would recommend would be chin tucks against a wall. This drill will help you get your neck back into its proper place. It’s a very simple drill that you can do throughout the day. Try doing one set of one minute holds throughout the day and week. Don’t force anything, just try to imagine that your chin is being pulled into the wall. I love this drill and use it myself. Your body follows your head and if you have forward head posture then it messes everything up.
Below I will show you 3 common exercises that people usually perform with a forward head posture:
DIPS
The forward head posture in dips is very common especially in the bottom position. You want to keep your head somewhat neutral even when you are in the bottom position.
PUSH UPS
Most people do push-ups with a forward head posture which is a shame because it’s an exercise with so many benefits. People who watch videos of people in the army doing push-ups think that the right way to perform the movement is with the neck hyperextended and looking at the leader but this is wrong. In theory, the best way to perform the push-up when trying to improve forward head posture would be to look down at the floor.
PULL UPS/CHIN UPS
Last but not least, the Pull-Up/Chin-Up. If I had a dollar for every time I saw somebody do a Chin-Up with their chin hyperextended over the bar, I’d have a lot of dollars. The problem with this exercise has a lot to do with the name. “Chin up” means that you have to get your chin over the bar but some people who can’t perform this exercise properly will use a forward head posture to try and finish the rep. This is such a common mistake, but it can easily be fixed by leaving your ego at the door and using the strength of your lats to get your chin above the bar. You want to focus on keeping your chin tucked when doing chin ups and pull ups. The exercise should actually be called “Chest-Up” because keeping your chest up really the important thing to remember when you are performing this movement.
It’s funny because it was actually hard to find pictures of people who had proper head positioning when doing dips, push-ups and pull-ups on Google. Search it for yourself and you will notice that most people perform these exercises with a forward head posture without even knowing it. It doesn’t stop there, we didn’t even get to the weight training exercises like Deadlifts, Rows, Shrugs and other lifts. I hope you learned something and try to apply this principle to all of your lifts, from planks all the way to curls. If you are cautious then you will be fine.