Many people work from home, and more and more people are coming to understand the benefits of setting your own schedule. Still, there are a few disadvantages to working from home, such as persistent body aches and pains.
A less-than-optimal workstation setup, such as working on your bed or couch, could be the culprit behind those aches and pains you’ve started to experience. Sitting for too long can also lead to muscle tightness or make existing pain worse.
Studies show that the prolonged rounded posture when sitting can compress your spine, reduce mid-spine mobility, decrease respiratory function, and is associated with increased death rates in older adults.
In this article, we will run you through how you can combat poor desk posture through exercises.
Why Exercise?
You can improve your posture by strengthening your postural and core muscles. A study involving college-aged males found that the participants had relieved shoulder pain, mid-back pain, and lower-back pain after following a posture correction exercise program.
What Exercises Should You Do?
Although the entire body is engaged in keeping your posture, the core and back play the most crucial role in helping you maintain a proper posture.
You will want an exercise program that strengthens your lats, traps, rhomboids, and the core muscles that support the lower back. This includes the obliques, erector spinae, multifidus, and quadratus lumborum.
You can go for elastic band workouts for better results. Muscles need tension (resistance) and progressive overload (increasing your resistance over time) for them to grow and strengthen.
Resistance bands are ideal for adding resistance to your regular workouts while being portable, affordable, and versatile compared to free weights or machines.
Resistance Band Workouts to Improve Your Posture
Here are some workout ideas with workout bands:
Getting the Most Out of Your Workout
Make sure to follow the following tips to get the most out of your core and back muscle strengthening workout:
- Get the most out of each movement by focusing on the specific muscle moving your body through the exercise.
- You can aim for two sets of 10 reps of these workouts twice per week for beginners. You can increase it to 3 sets of 12-15 reps and see visible results within 1-2 months.
- Have daily posture checks and reset if you find yourself in a head-forward position.
Conclusion
Body pains from lousy work from home posture are inconvenient, but they can be improved with proper exercise and strengthening your muscles. You will have to work at it and slowly build your core and back strength.
To get the most out of your exercise, you will want to be consistent and add resistance bands to your common core and back strengthening workouts.
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