Do you have shoulder tightness or neck and upper back pain? Try our simple wall slides to reduce pain and help improve mobility and strength.
Hi, this is Dana Ranahan from Body Works Sports Physiotherapy in North Vancouver. Happy Valentines Day! I’m here to show you an exercise to help open up your shoulders and your upper back.
- Put your back against the wall and bring your arms up at your sides to shoulder level with your elbows bent (assuming you don’t have shoulder pain here)
- I like to have the knees bent and feet out from the wall so it keeps your back more neutral to the wall
- You want to work with breath to soften your chest, because when you bring your arms here it makes you feel like you want to pop your chest forward.
- Think about breathing out. As you breathe out, soften the chest and slide the arms up the wall.
- So we work this repetitively, of course I’d be looking forward as I’m doing it.
- Breathing in, then as you breathe out soften the chest, raise up
- Breathe in, come back down.
So you basically go up and down within the range that you feel comfortable to try to get some opening through your shoulders, opening a little bit through the chest and softening with breath.
So that’s a nice exercise called Wall Slides that you can try to open things up. If you have any other questions, check out our website at body-works.ca