The posture grip
Rounded shoulders, head sagging forward and weak upper back curve is crazy common these days. The culprit – tons of tech time and weakness. The solution…well there are many ideas but few fixes. The reason? It is one thing to strengthen structures but it is a whole other to retrain motor patterns.
One of our favorite techniques is to mix a posture correction with a good standard exercise. The theory is that when you are working hard and there is a sensible reason for your nervous system to correct – it will. In this way we use your bodies habit of always trying to make tough physical movement easier work for you. Usually in exercise this works against you and has you over training your strengths and ignoring your weaknesses but that is for another post.
Here we ruin the fun of the kettlebell goblet squat but to good effect. By holding it by the handles and without gripping you will naturally want to keep it close to you. If you fall into poor posture you won’t be able to hold it at all or not for long. If you lean forward and cheat the squat too much with your low back you will be overwhelmed with how hard it is to hold.
Check the video and you will see it is just a good solid squat exercise but if you catch yourself gripping you will know you are starting to lose posture and cheat. This way you have instant feedback on your form. This kettlebell exercise will strengthen the proper muscles as well as retrain your motor skil…and yes it will also improve your general squatting skills.
You can learn the position with a lighter kettlebell but to get the full effect you need one that will challenge you especially if you let it fall away from your chest. Allow no finger grip, hold by pressing hands together and slightly upward. The more upright you stay (using all the upper body related musculature) the easier the kettlebell will be to hold.
Be well, be strong,
Andrew and Tierney
wefit.ca 
[…] Start slow and take your time. Mix this with last blog posts exercise to increase effects : https://wefit.ca/2017/03/27/kettlebell-posture-fix/ […]