Home Gym

I’m 25 years old and male. I started doing pushups and lifting weights when I was about 14 years old. I used to sit and still do sit with very poor posture in sort of a hunch back when I am sitting (an extremely bad habit that I constantly catch myself doing). Especially when it’s just like a bench with no back support at all, like a chair has. Trying to sit up as straight as I can seems to involve more of my lower back. I can feel it in my lower back (sort of a ‘pull’ of the muscles working to help me sit up straighter) when I try to sit up straight with proper posture. Even then, it’s kind of hard. I can back up straight against a wall, and the first thing that touches against the wall are the back of the arm/shoulder(?) bones in the upper-middle area of my back. When I turn sideways and look in the mirror, these bones stick out and give sort of a ‘hunched back’ look. I’ve read where a lot of people have said this is caused by too many push exercises and not enough pull exercises. However, nobody ever seems to address how to fix it – they just state that it "can be fixed by strengthening the weaker muscles." Apparently a lot of bodybuilders deal with this at some point. My shoulders definitely seem to be too far forward and don’t quite ‘line up’ straight with the rest of my body, like they should.

I use a home gym (Weider Crossbar Max or something like that) that is supposed to be able to do nearly every gym exercise. It’s a cable machine, and using free weights are not an option right now. What exercises can I do to correct this? I’ve also heard about some doctors having people get into weight lifting to fix such problems and other back problems. So, if you don’t know…please do not start on the rant of "Go see a chiropractor" or any other lame answer like that. They would say the same thing and would recommend strengthening the muscles.

So…which muscles specifically do I need to work on, and what exercises need to be done – is what I am trying to find out.
Also, it seems like other people can sit in the most uncomfortable positions…yet they automatically seem to manage to sit "straight" regardless. For me, it takes work to do so…

I think you should go to a gym and ask a trainer specifically to tell you what exercises you need to do and advice about the situation with your back.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 8:47 pm and is filed under weider home gyms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.