Round Shoulder Condition: 3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Posture

Having good body posture involves more than just looking good. It has a lot to do with our health and energy levels. Proper posture not only reduces neck and back pain but also improves overall spine health and joint and muscle function. It even impacts digestion and lung capacity. If you’re struggling with regular head and backaches or get quickly tired, you might have a problem with your body posture. Taking steps to improve your posture can lead to relieving these symptoms. How to know if your posture is bad?

You can test your body postures in many ways. One of the most apparent symptoms of bad posture is the round shoulders condition. We round our shoulders doing everyday activities like exercising, driving, sitting, reaching, standing, and looking at our cell phones. Poor posture habits, muscle imbalances and focusing too much on specific exercises also contribute to round shoulders. How to tell if you’re experiencing this problem?

One way to test yourself is to stand in front of a mirror and let your arms hang naturally by your sides. If your knuckles face forward, it may indicate that you have a tight chest and a weak upper back, giving the appearance of rounded shoulders. Even if it’s not that obvious, you may be asking yourself, ‘how can I improve my shoulder posture?’

There isn’t a quick fix for round shoulders. However, there are three simple ways to prevent and improve this condition. Being proactive and consistent while doing these things can make a world of difference for your overall health.

1. Shoulder Brace Support

A shoulder brace is a device specially designed to support your posture. To understand how these work, first, you need to understand the difference between good and bad posture.

Good posture is when the body’s muscles support the skeleton in a stable and energy-efficient way. Certain factors, such as daily habits, exercise, and even shoe choice, can take a toll on your posture. Bad posture is usually genetic or injury-induced. Sometimes it’s a consequence of gravity as we make repeated movements during our everyday activities.

Do shoulder braces work to correct posture? As posture is all about the strength of the muscles on the skeleton, the best fix is training those muscles to support your body back into its natural position. Although the primary way to do that is through exercise, it won’t be enough unless you try to maintain the natural alignment for the rest of the time. That’s where posture correctors enter the game: you can get shoulder brace online to help you guide your body back into its natural position.

How Do Shoulder Support Braces Work?

A shoulder posture brace will help you eliminate bad posture and rounded shoulders by constantly monitoring how you sit and stand. Some devices beep or vibrate when your posture is poor and stop when your posture is good. They work as posture trainers in a way to get your body to stand and sit correctly on its own. Others work in a way that provides support by pushing our shoulders back while working or relaxing. These can be more gentle or tough on our upper back, which depends on the type of the brace. 

What to Look for When Buying a Shoulder Posture Brace?

Usability

Pick up a posture corrector that you’ll use. Many people buy a support brace that ends up sitting more time in their closet than on their shoulders. Before you choose a posture corrector, ask yourself how it will support your posture? Can you wear it under your clothes? If you buy it in-store, it’s best to try it and see if it’s lightweight or bulky. Is it comfortable for wearing? Does it hurt under the armpits? Is it adjustable? If you buy your shoulder brace online, make sure to read the product description carefully and take the correct measurements, so it fits you well.

Correction and Positioning

You need to retrain your body to position itself correctly. This means your muscles need to do the adjusting and realigning here, not the device. You want to buy a brace to help you to correct your own posture rather than a device that forces or holds you in a specific position. Keep in mind that your posture corrector should encourage active correction, not passive positioning.

Focus of Support

You must know your specific needs before buying a shoulder brace. Do you hunch over your keyboard, or do you round your shoulders all the time? Do you need to support your shoulders only, or does your back need support too? Knowing these things will help you buy the right brace for you.

2. Stretching Exercises

Many people invest in an ergonomic chair and an adjustable desk to improve their workspace and home office productivity. They might even buy a shoulder brace for additional support and still get round shoulders. This is especially true if your bad posture is genetic or your problem is a deeper issue. The best thing you can do to encourage your body to get back into its natural position is exercise. To be more specific, you need to do some stretching exercises.The best stretching exercises for rounded shoulders are:

• Lateral neck flexion stretch
• Chest doorway stretch
• Reverse shoulder stretch
• Prone I, T, Y
• Band pull-apart
• Scapular wall slides

If you are not sure how to do these, you can look them up online. Performing these exercises correctly is vital for them to be effective.

3. Professional Help

Bad posture leads to weak and tight muscles. As many of the postural muscles attach to the spine, this can lead to misalignments of the spine and more serious problems. When this happens, unfortunately, it can be too late for braces and exercising. This is when it’s best to seek professional help. You can go the traditional route and visit a doctor that can refer you to physical therapy. Or, you can try alternative medicine, like chiropractor care.

Chiropractor care can be extremely useful when it comes to spine misalignments. When a chiropractor adjusts, they return the spine to its correct position. As a result, muscles can naturally relax since misaligned vertebrae are no longer pulling them. Therefore, chiropractic care can help improve your posture by returning muscles to their relaxed state.