No matter how strong you are, your shoulders are delicate pieces of machinery. They’re incredibly mobile, and with that mobility comes an increased potential for muscle and joint strain and injury. Whether you walk, run, lift weights, or do group fitness, you can use this Pilates technique for shoulder health, function, and breathing.

The Technique

You might be familiar with the phrase ‘lengthen through the spine’. This cue brings you up taller and sets you up for better posture and function. A less frequently used cue – widen through the shoulders – fine tunes the shoulders to an ideal position for function. It’s a quick way for you to instinctively cue more than a dozen muscles.

Width through the Shoulders

To open through the shoulders, think of increasing the space in your chest and trunk for your lungs to expand for optimal breathing. The simple cue – open or widen through the shoulders – can help us:

• Relax the muscles of the neck and upper shoulders, particularly the upper traps
• Relax the muscles on the front of the shoulders, especially the pecs
• Activate the lower traps and upper back extensors
• Activate the abdominal muscles

Try this out and see how you can apply it to some common exercises:

How It Works in Real Life

In real life, we don’t constantly maintain upright posture. When we exercise, we also round forward, extend, and rotate. Throughout our day, we reach and bend and change position to get things done. And yes, we slouch. (But we try not to do that.)

To function properly, we need to move the shoulders in and out of that neutral and open ‘home base’ position with control. We need to give the shoulder a chance to work well. And we need to maintain length and width and space for breathing with movement.

Spend some time practicing. Use this Pilates technique for shoulder health and better breathing. Over time, it will become second nature.

Stay fit!

Related Posts:

Pilates Inspired Core Work

What Exact Movement Lengthens the Spine?