Formosa Fitness

This post covers the whole spectrum of personal training, rehab, and martial arts. Over the years, I've talked about "Fixing people before they do IMA," "Yang style disease," Yang family bow training, and lately I've talked more about fixing people's postural problem through personal training. Today you'll see where all that meets up.

Opening the shoulders is something I'm finding almost universally applicable. Very few people walk through my door with healthy shoulders, MA people included. We just don't take our shoulders through a full range of motion even if we exercise often. The problem with nearly every martial art or exercise program is that even if you do them, they often prefer certain motions over others. This favors certain types of movement to the detriment of others, building muscle imbalances. And that's not even talking about folks that don't exercise much. For them, range of motion drops off very quickly because they aren't using much of it. Then one day they need to use that range of motion they had in the past and...

For IMA, the ability to open and close the body is very important. The incorrect idea of holding static postions like chest sunk, shoulders rounded, tailbone always tucked, etc. while doing every single movement virtually guarantees you'll screw up your entire body. I can't think of a worse way to train IMA or move, in general. You're virtually losing any sense of power you might have. It's like trying to accelerate while having the other foot jammed firmly on the brake all the time. Training like this, you'll lose your natural range of motion very quickly. This leads to the "old man posture" also known as Yang disease.

Fixing this in the upper body is relatively simple but pretty painful. I have a series of movements that I use to free the range of motion in the shoulders and I try to give these movements to everyone at some point. The most useful and easy to teach movement so far has been the shoulder dislocation exercise:

As you can see, it can be done with a staff or a belt. The belt is easier for beginners. I recommend that people do 50 of these everyday. The trick is to start with your hands far apart at first, KEEP THE ELBOWS LOCKED AT ALL TIMES, and go for a full range of motion. DO NOT unlock the elbows!!! This is usually the first mistake people make. As you get better, walk the hands in on the belt or staff.

This will be very painful for some of you but stick with it. The results come over about a month. You'll feel very relaxed and open in the chest as you walk and stand eventually.

This last part is also important for IMA guys. For example, I noticed a bit of confusion here in the comments about this type of training. We use this exercise to expand the chest and pull the shoulders through their natural range of motion. But we DO NOT use force to pull the shoulders back during normal standing or practicing. You won't have to. This exercise opens you up so that you fall into a more natural posture automatically as a result of training. We aren't replacing one bad posture habit with another. We're using the exercise to restore natural range of motion.

Almost everyone can benefit from this but you have to be diligent about it. A month minimum is needed. Also this is just step one. :) There's a progression beyond this as well as martial arts exercises that utilize this movement.

Add this to your daily routine and your upper body posture will improve dramatically. Enjoy.