Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

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lux7
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Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

Post by lux7 »

Hi!

I have had a poor posture for quite a while now with forward head posture and rounded shoulders.

It's been a month or so that I'm working on improving posture.

I try to stand and walk with shoulders back and chest out, but after a while the area around sternum, slightly on the right, hurts.
It might be not a coincidence that right shoulder is a bit more inward and rounded than left one, but again, I'm not sure, it might also be just a coincidence.

I can't be 100% sure, but I think it's more of a bones pain than a muscular thing.


Any idea on the issue is very appreciated
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Boss Man
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Re: Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

Post by Boss Man »

Do you do any weight training and if so what kind, because if you do, it might be related to some kind of two handed shoulder exercise, where one side of the body becomes dependant on the other, causing irregular development of the anterior deltoids.
lux7
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Re: Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

Post by lux7 »

Thanks Boss.

Yes, I do push ups regularly, like around 3 times a week, 3 reps of 35 (the last one till failure), have been doing them for a long time.

Only very recently I added 3 kinds of pull exercises with tera bands to counter muscular imbalances and strengthen back.
Also as I read in a few articles I'm stretching pecs (like in the picture below).


It's not painful doing the exercises, it's when I "force" myself to walk and stand with shoulders back and open chest that hurts, but reaction tends to be "I'm not going to give in to this pain, I'll keep it like this until the pain goes away ".


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Boss Man
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Re: Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

Post by Boss Man »

You may have possibly created an imbalance between the pectoral area and anterior deltoid area, at the front of the torso, versus the lateral, trapezius and posterioir deltoid areas, in the rear of the torso, so you might want to try and counteract this with some back exercises.

If you are just doing bodyweighted execises, than you could consider trying some bent over rows, or standing reverse flyes, which with the latter would involve being in the bent over row position, but keeping the arms slight bent and projecting them out wide and back in again, not up and down like you would with rows.

This might help to correct the issue, but because the pushups may be the cause of the problem, I would suggest you cut the amount down by half and implement either of the two mentioned exercises twice as much for the interim period, the idea being the back develops whilst the chest maintains, until the issue hopefully corrects itself and then you would do the pushups and the back exercise in equal amounts.
lux7
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Re: Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

Post by lux7 »

Thank you very much Boss Man!

I also have another suspect:
the pain, at least partially, might be due to the fact that I'm overcompensating previous issues: looking myself at the mirror it seems to me that I tend to push upper torso way too back rather than keeping it straight and shoulders way too back rather than simply having an open chest.

Experimenting around, will update this thread.
Alinshop
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Re: Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

Post by Alinshop »

Hope you get to the root of the problem soon.
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Re: Posture exercises - Sternum pain. Why?

Post by Alinshop »

Have you ever tried Rock Tape?

http://rocktape.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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