How to Fix Rounded Shoulders (FOREVER!)

If you want to know how to fix rounded shoulders forever, then you have come to the right place. In this video, I am going to show you exactly what we did to change Jesse’s bad posture and rounded shoulders to the good posture that he has now. If you follow what i lay out in this video, then you too

if you’ve got rounded shoulders then this is the video that you’re going to want to watch cuz I’m going to help you fix it today okay but there’s a test and it starts right here do me a favor Jess you can do it yourself okay keep your arms right here at your sides really loose and relaxed okay you might have to stand up to do this and then extend your thumbs out just point your thumbs out you got them got them all right now you at home and Jesse I want you to notice what direction are your thumbs pointing right now where are they pointing yours are yours are somewhat forward here if your thumbs are pointing towards each other which anybody with rounded shoulders is going to have they’re going to see that they’re pointing almost directly towards each other you got a major problem and you’re going to have to fix it okay and I’m going to share with you the same exact thing we did with Jesse because Jesse didn’t always have posture that allow his thumbs to extend straight out in front of them he actually looked like this and we’ve come a long way but four steps will’ll get it done I want to take you through all four let’s get going and so the first of four things you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to fix your Mobility but it’s not your shoulder that you’re worried about here I understand it’s what you might think but really the problem is right here in your back your thoracic Mobility is what’s lacking so to fix that you lay on your stomach I’m going to take Jesse through exactly what I did with him and what you guys can do your arms will be up overhead just like that in sort of a y position and all you’re going to do is choose one side or the other we’ll choose this one Jesse you’re going to open that up roll yourself all the way to that side and then try to keep your hips down as much as you can so what that’s doing is is causing some rotation through the thoracic spine and it’s also causing extension so what you’re lacking right now you’re getting through this one feel-good stretch you come back down after about five or 10 seconds and then you roll yourself back in that direction now you’re getting rotation this way but more extension through the thoracic spine now you do this about one or two times a day three or four repetitions to each side is all you need and I promise you it’s going to start to really open up the extension through that upper back which if that opens up the shoulders can come up into the right position if your back is rounded like that I don’t care what you to your shoulders it’s not going to stick if you have access to a foam roller you can lay out here Jesse you could actually use one of the easy PR te at the gym you put it right in this area of the upper back that’s the thoracic spine and you lay yourself right over the top of it okay now one thing that will actually make this more effective is if you have anything of any weight this is just a medicine ball you hold it on your chest and just let it drop you that way okay it’s actually just pushing down with a little bit more Force to give you some are you groaning over there yeah feels good to give you some of that additional Mobility work through that thoracic spine when that’s unlocked you’re already on your way to fixing those rounded shoulders but there’s more to do the second thing you’re going to have to do here is stretch something because usually when the shoulders are in this position for too long something gets tight and because of something called upper cross syndrome there’s three muscles that tend to get tight together the first two are go ahead Jesse assume that old position the first two are going to be the upper traps and something called the later scap that pull the shoulder blades up into this position like that okay the good news is you don’t really have to do anything about those because once you establish that thoracic extension again the mobility from the last drill gravity will actually help to pull these shoulders back down out of that Shrugged position so that’s good that’s easier for you the third muscle however is one called the PEC minor though and this you’re going to have to do something about okay because this one runs from this point on your shoulder blade deep in your shoulder and it connects down to the third fourth and fifth rib so if it’s connected to your shoulder blade it’s literally going to do three things it’s going to yank on this in the wrong direction the first thing it’s going to do come a little closer Jesse right here is it’s going to pull the shoulder forward like that the shoulder blade is going to want to go like that okay instantly rounding your shoulder out the next thing is it’s going to pull it around the corner like that okay we don’t want it to go this direction but that’s where that tight Peck minor is going to put it and then lastly it’s going to kind of rotate it down this direction here like that okay to do something about that turn the other side we want to stretch that out we got to go this direction opposite right and it’s important to know these directions so you can make sure you’re getting your stretch right you want this first and foremost to go back in that direction okay the second thing is you want it to go back around the corner in the opposite direction and then the last thing is you want to be able to rotate it up this way as opposed to down you can see right away how that instantly improves the posture but how do we do that in a stretch right here with a simple wall stretch or door stretch all you have to do is Step through a door so you get into a door frame like this the first thing you do is you put that bony bump of your shoulder up against the inside of the door frame okay you push it back so instead of having it in this random position let the door frame help push you back the next thing you want to do is you want to make sure you’re retracting your shoulder blades right so instead of it having wrapped around this way wrap it back around that way by pinching your shoulder blades together are you doing that yes sir the last thing to get the rotation in the right direction you want to put your arm up on the inside of that door frame and then just let it slide up because as we slide our arm up it starts to rotate the scapula up instead of down you can feel that feels great you can literally see this muscle that we just drew out here being stretched up into that position all you have to do 30 or 45 seconds on both sides maybe once twice a day but just be consistent with it you’re going to really start to stretch that out and help to fix that there is another thing you can do too because we know it’s not just the PEC minor that gets tight but the pecs as well as as well as something called the subscapularis which can internally rotate the shoulder you can do one more doorway stretch this time you step through with your outside leg step through the door the other leg step back in in the door itself now put your hand up on your ear like this this is just to establish the right height once it’s on your ear you extend and and make contact with the door and keep your elbow on the inside of that frame and that’s all you got to do is you start leaning forward and rotating through you feel that yeah you can slide down just even a little bit you get external rotation at the shoulder right to work on that subscapularis and you also stretch out the pecs here these two stretch stretches again really quick just be consistent with it we’ll go a long way towards reversing the roundedness that you’re dealing with now from a stretching perspective but there’s still