photo credit: Martin Kingsley

Chronic neck and shoulder stiffness and pain are symptoms many of us deal with on a daily basis. Whether it’s a nagging crick in your neck, a pain that keeps you from being able to turn and check your blind spot while driving, or inhibited range of motion in your shoulder joint that keeps you from doing certain exercises in the gym, most of us in the modern world are affected by some form of this discomfort in the neck and shoulder area.

While there are cases where severe shoulder injury will require surgery or some other invasive intervention to realize recovery, these symptoms are more often a result of the modern human lifestyle, and that means you have the power to eradicate them by making a few of the following lifestyle changes.

• Identify where you carry stress – Many of us, myself included, carry the bulk of their stress load in their neck and shoulders. The next time somebody cuts in front of you on the interstate, take inventory of your posture. Are your shoulder blades splaying outward? Are your shoulders creeping up toward your ears? Are the muscles in your neck collapsing your cervical vertebrae? Take note of these things and try to be more mindful in times of stress. Breathe deeply. As a rule, try to keep your shoulder blades parallel to the midline of the body and relatively close to the spine. Also work on relaxing your shoulders down away from your ears.
• Push and pull together – A common cause of these symptoms is muscle imbalance between the front and back of the body. For this reason it’s imperative that you work your back at least as much as your chest when you’re in the gym. Overdeveloped chest muscles are a big culprit as they tend to pull the shoulders forward, causing the shoulder blades to splay outward, decreasing their stability. It’s important to pay attention to your levator scapulae, rhomboids, and infraspinatus muscles. These are very important in stabilizing the shoulder joint in overhead presses and other movements involving external rotation of the upper arm (humerous). Check out this great article by Medhi at stronglifts.com for more on working with the infraspinatus muscle.
• Know your ergonomics – Another reason we have such problems with posture is the amount of time we spend sitting in front of computers every day. Slouching at the desk is probably inevitable, but check out this website for some great info on workstation ergonomics that could help you get your posture back on track.
• Develop your range of motion – The shoulder joint is a ball and socket configuration, giving it a wide range of possible movements including flexion and extension, abduction and adduction, rotation around the center-line of the humerous, and circumduction (which is basically drawing a circle in the air with your hand). Take a look at the video tutorial below for some great mobility exercises to take your shoulder joint through its entire range of motion. This will help improve your kinesthetic awareness and increase your ability to stabilize your shoulder joint and your shoulder girdle (collarbone and shoulder-blade).

I’ll warn you, this video is a full 10 minutes long. I’ve made some improvements on the first edition, though. The exercises all happen in the first five minutes, while the latter five minutes is more technical. Please comment below and let me know how I might improve on my communications. Thanks for reading and watching!

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 It seems that the physical fitness Holy Grail for the majority people I work with is a killer core. If you’re a guy, you want ripped, 6-pack abs. If you’re a girl, you want a sleek and sexy, well toned midsection. Problem is, most people don’t employ an effective strategy for toning their core muscles and bringing out their latent 6-pack. Crunches alone aren’t going to do the job. Neither will starving yourself and running 5 miles a day.

The first step is dropping the ego a bit and mentally preparing yourself for the fact that the perfect body doesn’t really exist, and that for most of us, simply having a flat stomach is sexier than, and just as good for our long-term health as a ripped-to-shreds six pack. Having established that, the best way to pull every bit of sex appeal you can from your midsection is to take a two-pronged approach to your workout routine. This means regularly performing exercises that build and tone the abdominals, obliques, and other muscles of the core while at the same time adopting a cardio program that effectively burns fat from your tummy. The former without the latter only serves to increase the pooch above your belt buckle, while the latter without the former only turns you into a skinny waif. Of course, diet figures heavily into this equation, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the combination of toning your core and getting cardio designed to burn fat in order to unleash those sexy abdominals.

Effective Core Strengthening Exercises

First off, rid your mind of the two following myths:

1. Since the rectus abdominus (down the center of your stomach), is what we actually see as the “six pack,” I should concentrate on bulking it up and forget about the transversus abdominis, obliques, and other core muscles. Not true – a tight, sexy abdomen has as much to do with these other, more behind-the-scenes muscles as it does with the star of the show.
2. I should keep a running tally of how many crunches I can do while I watch American Idol, and shoot for doing more in a row each night. Again, not true – you’re better served performing fewer, more concentrated exercises if achieving the 6-pack is your goal.

Okay, so now that you’ve purged your mind of this nonsense, let’s talk about the single greatest piece of workout equipment ever devised for increasing core muscle strength and tone: the ab wheel. That’s right, this cheap, simple, unassuming little gadget will do more for your midsection than anything, ever. How can this be true, you might ask?

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