Do you also tend to sit a lot throughout your day?

While the act of sitting itself isn't a bad thing, spend too much time in one posture and your body will begin to adapt to it, and adaptation isn't always a good thing.

For example, sitting in the common slouched posture with rounded shoulders can often lead to a stiff thoracic spine and tight pec muscles as they're constantly held in a short position.

Over time, these postural changes can alter how your body moves during the day and when lifting weights.

And because your body will be handling the stresses placed on it less efficiently, there's more potential for wear and tear on the joints and ligaments and increased risk of injury.

However, there is hope.

You can reverse the effects of sitting all day and improve your posture in as little as two weeks.

Today, I'm going to give you a quick and effective mobility drill that focuses on opening up common stiff areas like your mid-back and shoulders.

And to help you find lasting improvements, I'm then going to give you three corrective exercise options with difficulty progressions from beginner level to advanced versions that are designed specifically to enhance your control and strength within these newfound movement capabilities.

When combined, this two-step process of mobility first and stability second can easily be performed, even when short on time, as a quick and effective warm-up routine within your existing workouts.

So we need to get the mobility for better posture by extending our spine through rotation.

Here's the exercise we're going to do, the world's greatest stretch from a kneeling position.

You're going to place your hand down on the ground and rotate your upper body until you feel a light stretch in your back and maybe even your pecs a little bit.

You're going to hold this for a couple seconds and then come back down.

I would do maybe three reps on each side.

But by enhancing your ability to rotate through your upper back, you will also therefore enhance your ability to extend the upper back for better posture.

So we're going to do a couple of reps right here and then let's switch sides.

Put the right knee down, left leg up.

Same thing, you're going to start off with the hand down into the ground and then you're going to twist up until you feel a light stretch in the back and through the pecs.

So now that we have that new mobility, we need to strengthen and stabilize through that range of motion if we want our new mobility to actually stick for better posture.

How we're going to do that is a single arm kettlebell windmill or using the U-Bell from Ab Mat.

How we're going to do this is start off in your kneeling position with the weight held by your side.

So let's start all the way back up.

From this position, your core is tight.

You're going to press the bell straight up.

From here, you are going to reach down with your hand and twist just like you did with the windmill world's greatest stretch that we did at the start.

Hold for a few seconds, making sure everything is in a pure line going down.

This is stabilizing that upper back and strengthening all these muscles to hold that better posture and then come back up.

Now that is technically easy step number one.

Easy step 1B is going to be doing that exact same thing, but you're going to drop into a greater range of motion by going to your elbow.

So you're going to do the exact same thing.

You're going to press the weight above.

You're going to go down to your hand.

And then from here, you can drop down into a greater range of motion.

We have a greater stretch here going all the way down through the trunk and into the hips.

But again, we're strengthening this thoracic spine rotation and all the muscles of our upper back and chest to integrate into better posture, which is what we're looking for for long-term carryover.

Progression number two.

This is medium difficulty.

We're going to do our windmill from the split kneeling position like this.

This is a greater demand on lower body and trunk control, which is just as much of a part of your upper body posture as is the thoracic spine mobility.

So you are going to press from this position.

We're going to twist and go down to the hand.

Hold this position.

Again, stabilizing everything up here.

And then come back up.

Now this is to A.

Let's go to B.

How can you progress within this medium difficulty?

We can go through a greater range of motion.

So he's going to press, come down to the hand, and be in a good position with the hand that you can then drop down to the elbow.

Again, greater range of motion at the upper body and all the way down into the trunk and the hips.

Stabilizing through that posture and all the way back up.

Okay, step three and our hardest progression of this strengthening and stabilizing through this posture progression is going to be a rotation mixed with a squat.

Here's what it's going to look like.

We're going to get that weight into our overhead position.

As you squat down, you also rotate your upper body.

Pause in this bottom position for at least five seconds, feeling for your body being very stable down here, core is tight.

Upper body is in that very mobile, twisted position, and then all the way back up.

Now here's the thing that I want you to be able to do is have equal access on right and left sides.

If you can do this really well on one side, but you have a problem on your other side, you just found a weak link in your strength of those extreme posture range of motions, that may be holding you back from end range long term postural carryover.

So try a couple on one side and the other side as well.

If you cannot do this, that's okay.

We just stay with the step two.

But let's see one more version of this.

So go overhead.

Stabilize first, a little bit of a twist, squat down, open those hips up, pause down in here for five seconds.

We're pressing up.

We're very strong in that upper back, very mobile, and then all the way back up.

All right, guys, that's it for today's video.

If you're looking for more exercises that will help you strengthen your good posture for long term carryover, check out this video.

It's got a novel method that will help your mobility work actually stick around for a long time for improved posture in day-to-day life for the rest of your life.