In our western culture we have adopted the habit of breathing inefficiently.  We tend to overuse our upper body musculature through lifting our chest and shrugging our shoulders upon inhalation.

This type of breathing leads to the overuse and fatigue of those upper body muscles that are picking up the slack of a weak diaphragm.  This faulty pattern can then lead to pain and dysfunction in the upper back and neck.

The solution: learn intra-abdominal breathing.  A few exercises worth trying out are crocodile breaths, loaded medicine ball breaths, and the practicing of taking in deep breaths while in various postures and positions.

Tips

When inhaling focus on expanding your abdomen 3 dimensionally.

Test your ability take a quality breath by watching yourself in the mirror.  Does your chest raise, do you shrug your shoulders?

It can be hard to strengthen the diaphragm at first.  Be sure to take breaks if you get light headed from training.

Practice one of the techniques in the video below for 5 minutes each day.  Notice a change in stiffness or pain reduction in your upper back, chest or neck.

Once you become proficient in the above techniques, start strengthening your new breath in different positions.  10 strong breaths in any one of these will take you to the next level.

Your hands; they’re the most sensory rich part of your body.  The amount of nervous system feedback from your hands to your brain dwarves any other part of your body.  Your shoulders, hips, knees, feet and back don’t even come close.

When you go through the paces of everyday life, your brain relies on signals from your hands, especially when something physical is about to take place.

This is why it’s important to have a strong grip.  A tight grip will reinforce a tight posture through that nervous system feedback.  The brain knows, if the grip is taking an activity seriously, the rest of the body should follow suit.

Test this next time you workout.  Grip those weights just a little bit harder than necessary and you’ll feel much more stable in your lifts.  You can even train your grip when opening and closing doors, carrying a brief case, shaking hands or even just putting dishes away (don’t break them of course).

A good but not exhaustive list of exercises that help with grip strength.

• Dead Lifts
• Pull UPs
• Body Weight Rows
• Kettlebell Swings
• Farmers Walks
• Dumbbell Rows

You should be using a variety of these in your workouts in order to strengthen your grip while your arms are in different positions.