Desk jockeys, this video is for you. I'm Dr. Greg Spooner physical therapist and, if you've been noticing that your neck or your shoulder, if you've been sitting at the desk all day, slaving away at the computer is getting in the way of things, then I have two things that I want you to focus your time on over the next one to two weeks.
First one is posture. Now you hear posture all the time you and I'm sure growing up at some point, you had the finger wagged at you that said, sit up straight young man or young lady. We all know how well that works. We sit up, we're nice and tall and then within about 30 seconds, we're coming right back down here, especially as we're typing away on the computer. It’s hard to get around that. But awareness is the first thing. But what you can do is, set a timer and once and when you're at your desk, what you're going to do that timer is going to go off, and you're going to perform a 30-second exaggerated posture check.
Here's what I mean by that. You're going to sit nice and tall; you're going to lift up the sternum, squeeze the shoulder blades back together, and tuck those ears back over the shoulders. You're going to hold that for five seconds and you're going to relax. You're going to do that five times, five by five seconds, it's going to take you 30 seconds total and what you're going to notice is after first couple days of doing that, is you're going to notice that your neck starts to feel a little bit better. If you've been getting any symptoms going out into the shoulders or the arms or the hands, that it’s not as intensive as it used to be.
Second activity to do is to make sure that all that time spent typing at the computer is counteracted, because when we spend too much time there, our pec muscles get real tight. So, we have to stretch them out. Now you may have heard in the past when you stretch, hold it 5, 10 seconds. That is not nearly enough. You want to go at least 30 seconds. So, find your favorite doorway, set your arms up right on the doorway and then engage that stretch.
Now I don't want you to hang right on it, because your muscles are going to be working. We gotta get them relaxed. So, what you're going to do is, you're going to take a step into it, so you have good support. You're going to hold that stretch at least 30 seconds. I'd like to see if you can go upwards of a minute. Now along the way, you may notice that oh, my hands start to feel a little cold or make it a little tingly - very normal.
We just put a little bit of light tension on the nerves that is a-okay, because by the time you put your arms down, your hands are going to go all back to normal. You're going to feel right as rain again. So, two items, hourly posture checks and then pec stretch one to two times a day for upwards of a minute.