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  • What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

  • Today I'm going to show you in five simple steps how you can start fixing your posture

  • once and for all. You see, it's not that you haven't been trying in the past, but I'm telling

  • you, you've probably been trying the wrong things because a lot of people mean well,

  • but they're not telling you the right cues and the right things to focus on.

  • It's getting you either looking really strange walking around, or more frustrated because

  • you can't fix anything long term. Here's what you have to do: you've got to start focusing

  • on the things that you can change. The first thing you need to do is stand up, get yourself

  • in the mirror and turn sideways because you want to look at the angle of your neck first.

  • Now, a lot of us will tell you that you have to tuck your chin in, you've got to do 'this'.

  • That's awkward. That's not going toyou're going to walk around like this. It's not really

  • fixing what you're trying to fix. If you look at the angle of your neckand I'm talking

  • about this portion, from here to herewhat is it doing? Is it tilted forward?

  • If it's tilted forward at all here you're not talking about the angle that you want.

  • The angle that you want is going to be almost vertical here and perpendicular to the ceiling.

  • What happens is, when the angle of your neck is there, it actually puts your chin and the

  • rest of your head in a nice carrying position. Instead of having to worry about having to

  • pull your chin backing in.

  • What happens is, we do get misguided and think that we're in the right position because even

  • when we're forward, our bodies are smart enough to make sure that our eyes are pointed forward

  • so we lift up. If you looked in the mirror you'd quickly see that's what going on. So

  • fix the neck. Then we can move down to the next segment here and it's in the shoulder

  • girdle. Again, what's the advice you've been given?

  • It's "Pinch your shoulder blades together," or "Roll your shoulders back." The problem

  • is you walk around like a chicken that way because you're not really fixing what you're

  • supposed to be fixing. What you can do alternatively, in a much easier, more effective way, is focus

  • right here on the sternum. This bone here in your chest isn't going anywhere, but it's

  • controlling your ribcage position.

  • Your ribcage is obviously controlling your shoulder blade position because they're attached

  • to it. So what you want to do is focus on the position of the top portion, right here,

  • of your sternum. Is it angled down at all? I can guarantee if you have forward shoulders

  • then it's not going to be angled down like you see here. You can fix that by lifting

  • your sternum and trying to get the top of itthink of it as a glass of water.

  • Is it pouring out forward at all, or can you get it perfectly straight? You can do that

  • by lifting your sternum up, but look what happens when we do that. That's so easy to

  • control, but when we do that the shoulders go, what? Back and down. They're in the perfect

  • position, just by fixing the position of our sternum. So now you're 2/5 of the way there.

  • Let's keep it going. As we work our down to the kinetic chain we have to always pass through

  • the core.

  • That's a good thing because your core is something that you need to help you to stabilize the

  • position in the proper position that you've already established up above. Remember, this

  • is one continuous spine from your neck to in between your shoulder blades, in through

  • your thoracic spine, now down into your lumbar spine. Well, we can control that and stabilize

  • that by having some contraction of the core. Now I'm not talking about flexing.

  • That's all going to pull down and create actual spinal flexion. That wouldn’t help us. I'

  • talking about creating and engagement here of your core and getting better at being able

  • to do that throughout the entire day. you can do that and talk and you can do that and

  • do whatever else you're doing by increasing the tone of your abs. the resting tone of

  • your abs. again, you're getting the stability. So now, here you are, your chest is up, your

  • neck's in the right position, stabilized by getting a little bit of a contraction of your

  • core.

  • You're not flexing, but contracting. Work your way down the chain now. Now we're into

  • the pelvis. Here's the problem. Again, most of us sit all day long. We work, we drive;

  • whatever it is. We have the anterior tilt of the pelvis that happens because the hip

  • flexors get tight from all the sitting that we do. As they pull down they get us into

  • this anterior tilt like you see here. We can fix that very, very easily, but just contracting

  • our gluts. Squeeze your butt cheeks together as hard as you can and guess what?

  • You just put yourself into more of a posterior tilt. You might be in a perfectly neutral

  • position, but you're going from an anterior position to a more posterior position by contracting

  • your gluts. Keep that going with the contraction of your abs and you've got a nice co-contraction

  • and you just stabilized the pelvis and put it in the right spot by having both of those

  • areas contracted together. Now finally, check out the position of your knees. I can pretty

  • much guarantee you've got some flexion going on in your knees, you've got a little bit

  • of bend going on in your knees, and you didn't even realize it.

  • Here's the coup de gras to bring it all together; straighten the knees. Contract your quads.

  • You can see now that the entire posture from the top down has been fixed in just five,

  • easy to manipulate areas. You can easily change the degree of flexion in your knees. You can

  • easily change the contraction going on in your gluts by just actively squeezing them

  • together. You can easily engage your abs more than you are right now. You can easily tilt

  • your sternum up if it's pointing down, and you can easily change the position of your

  • neck without having to worry about all these crazy, weird things.

  • It's not that hard to do, but now I'm going to tell you how to keep it there because if

  • you can't keep it there, what's the point in the first place? You can keep it there

  • by using this one drill that I do. It's sort of like this Cam Newton Superman drill, believe

  • it or not. What you do is you take a band, you wrap it arounddon’t' worry you're

  • not going to suffocate yourself, or constrict yourself too much. You wrap around from the

  • front to the back and you bring the bands in front of you. You grab the left one with

  • the right hand, the right one with the left hand, and you get your hands in position right

  • here in front of your chest.

  • Now, hereremember Cam Newton pull outopen to Superman chest, this way, reveal

  • your "S"; we're going to do the same thing. You're going to take it from here, you're

  • going to pull out and rotate. So here, now what I've done is I automatically find that

  • because the band is across my low back it's pulling me into this nice, upright posture.

  • From here, my shoulder blades are going down and back because the sternum is coming up.

  • Here I've got external rotation on the shoulders because my bands are coming out and back and

  • thumbs are pointing toward the back.

  • Of course, I focus on keeping the core contracted beneath the bands, I got my butt squeezed

  • together to get the gluts going to make sure that pelvis is in the right position and I've

  • got my knees nice and straight and all I did was hold this here for as long as I can. If

  • I could hold it for one or two minutes, great. If I find that I'm fatiguing and losing the

  • right changes that I've incorporated here then I might want to relax and do it again.

  • The idea is, once you've done that, take it out, come back here, and stand. Then you'll

  • see that it's way easier for your to maintain that position because most of the time these

  • areas that we're trying to change here are just dormant.

  • They're just waiting to be woken up. If you do this a couple times a dayand I mean

  • literally a couple timesyou could do it for a minute or two, good. Do it once or

  • twice a day you will see incredibly fast changes, like I said, we were talking about tapping

  • into areas that you never knew how to control before. By just doing it in a different way

  • you're finally able to control the muscles to make some really quick changes here and

  • be able to maintain a much better posture without having to think about it. Try these.

  • Its' very, very simple and I want you to tell me how it works for you.

  • In the meantime, if you're looking for a program that doesn't just tell you "This is how it

  • works," but shows you how to do it step by step so you understand, number onebecause

  • when you understand you're much more capable of doing things much more quickly – I do

  • that for you. I try to break it down for you step by step. It's the ATHLEANX training program.

  • You can get it over at ATHLEANX.com. I hope this one helped you out. Make sure you let

  • me know below. Leave your comments and a thumbs up and let me know what else you want me to

  • cover here on this channel and I'll do my best to do that in the days and weeks ahead.

  • I'll see you back here soon.

What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

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