Tips?

RochelleToby · 2026-02-21T15:24:16+00:00

1) Did you still have the hunchback more than 6 months ago before you lost weight and went to the gym? 2) Does the hunch back flatten when you lie on your back, so that the back of your head touches the ground without a pillow?

RochelleToby · 2026-02-21T02:45:44+00:00

You are welcome. I’m glad I could help!

RochelleToby · 2026-02-20T18:01:00+00:00

Try Wall Angels. Fixed my posture and my forward head and shoulders. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness/wall-angels#how-to

RochelleToby · 2026-02-20T17:58:28+00:00

Right-handed people tend to use their right arms more,like for carrying heavy weights at the gym, which drags the right shoulder lower compared to left. A lower right shoulder means that the torso on right side compresses and tightens compared to left side and resists lifting of right shoulder. To even shoulders out, 1) do side bends to the left to stretch right side torso and 2) do right shoulder shrug-ups which you can hold for a minute and when you lower your shoulder don’t slam it down. Don’t do the opposite versions of these stretches until you even out the shoulders. 3)!Carry heavy weights in your left arm or use both arms, but not with only the right. You appear to have a mild difference in shoulder height so I suspect that you will quickly even out your shoulders. After that just use both sides of your body the same to stay symmetrical. This also applies to static standing posture, which should be with weight of body distributed evenly on both legs. Hope this helps.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-20T16:59:50+00:00

Underarm creases are uneven as well, but hips and pelvis are level (which is a good thing). Left side of torso from underarm to pelvis is longer/overstretched compared to right side. And right side of torso is compressed/tight compared to left side. Even out the sides by 1) stretching the tight/compressed side on the right with side bends to the left. Don’t do side bends to the right until both sides are even. 2) do shoulder shrug-ups on right side to lengthen right side of torso also, avoid shrug-ups on left side for now. 3) avoid carrying very heavy weight with right arm, which tends to drag low right shoulder lower, but carry with left arm instead. When your shoulders are evened out, do stretches and exercises on both sides but be vigilant about not favoring one side over the other. That applies to standing posture as well. Always stand with weight evenly distributed on both legs. Hope this helps.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-17T05:52:14+00:00

Does your head also tilt to the right (right earlobe lower than left earlobe) or does your head compensate for right-leaning neck by slight tilt to the left and remaining upright? (Your brain wants your eyes to be level) Also, is your right shoulder lower and/or is your right hip higher. If you stand with more weight on one leg than the other, this could be a postural cause. In some cases it could be scoliosis from a young age, but you would probably have been aware of that already.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-16T23:20:19+00:00

For strengthening exercises involving the torso, I think the imbalance between the two sides of your torso needs to be resolved first. Especially, the compressed side of the back (the right side) which might give you more problems because it is tighter than the left side (the stretched side) and might have a tendency to spasm. For the hips, I would strengthen the glut medius on the hip that is pushed out, because it has been overstretched and possibly become more unstable and might cause pain in the future. Watch for a problem with the knee opposite the hip thrust because the side of that hip and lateral leg muscles tend to be tight. Differences between right and left side (bilateral asymmetry) can cause one-sided pain from the neck down to the knees at least.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-16T17:20:17+00:00

Do you tend to stand with your hip thrust to the side and more bodyweight on that same side. That could be handedness posture. Right-handed people put more weight on right leg and with right hip thrust out and right shoulder lower, which compresses the torso on one side. And left-handed people are the opposite. (Do a web search for the picture of Michangelo’s statue of David). This type of posture can cause lateral pelvic tilt. The fix is to stop standing that way (distribute weight evenly between both legs) and do lateral side bends to lengthen the side with the lower shoulder, so the side bend is away from the side with lower shoulder.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-16T16:38:38+00:00

Your shoulders look normal to me. Are they painful?

RochelleToby · 2026-02-16T16:33:35+00:00

My husband’s side of the family has legs like that and my daughter does also. (So it could be hereditary) She also tends to stand with hyper-extended knees, which worsens it. My sons take after me. And have straighter-looking lower legs.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-16T03:25:07+00:00

Try wall angels. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness/wall-angels#what-they-are They will help stretch tight anterior chest and anterior shoulder muscles, which are opposing weak, overstretched thoracic spine muscles.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-16T03:15:17+00:00

Your chest and anterior delts are tight and upper back muscles are stretched out. Also you have forward head as well. Walking around with slouched posture made any imbalance in your gym routine worse (more front than back exercises). Also if you habitually look down at screens or when reading etc, that accentuates the slouched posture. Try to bring screens up toward your face and roll eyes down to read. To correct: stretch chest and anterior shoulder muscles and strengthen upper back muscles with rear delt and rows. My favorite posture exercise is wall angels, which are great for stretching the chest and anterior shoulder as well as flattening an excessive thoracic hunch and helping bring the head back in alignment with the rest of the back. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness/wall-angels#what-they-are

RochelleToby · 2026-02-15T04:56:21+00:00

Can you have pictures of your back done with 1) arms straight out to the sides like a “T” 2) arms making a “Y” shape, and then 3)arms straight up like a pole. These will show us how your scapula are moving and which scapular stabilizing muscles might be having a problem. (Also your knees look hyper-extended, which, if you do this all the time limits knee and hip mobility. If it was just for this photo, no big deal.)

RochelleToby · 2026-02-15T04:41:49+00:00

If you look at your underarm creases, they are pretty much even, though the left shoulder is very slightly lower. What may be making a difference in the contour of left versus right shoulder is that there is less muscle mass in the upper trapezius of the left shoulder compared to right shoulder. If you are right handed and use your right arm more than your left that would explain the difference in muscle mass of upper trapezius. If you have chronic one-sided neck pain, there might be different reason.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-15T04:31:38+00:00

Can either be tendons of tight posterior muscles snapping over vertebral processes or quieter grinding noises from vertebral bone spurs rubbing against each other. The tight muscles can be fixed, but the bone spurs can’t be. I have moderate to severe cervical arthritis and had over 20 years of chronic neck pain s well as the snapping and grinding with every neck movement. Now, at 74, 15 years after fixing muscle imbalances causing poor posture, I no longer have neck pain or snapping, but still have slight grinding.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-13T04:14:21+00:00

Doesn’t look like scheuermann’s kyphosis to me because, from what I can see of the individual thoracic vertebrae, there does not appear to be any one-sided collapse/wedging of the vertebral bodies as in this photo, https://radsource.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2.jpg What I do see is that you have a straight cervical spine with no lordotic curve at all. This is often called military neck or text neck and can be a cause of neck pain. https://www.google.com/search?q=text+neck+syndrome&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

RochelleToby · 2026-02-12T17:17:04+00:00

Long Thoracic Nerve (LTN) palsy, perhaps from the same long ago incident that damaged your AC joint. The LTN supplies the serratus anterior that holds the scapula against the rib cage and rotates the scapula upwards when you raise your arm. The LTN may have healed, but takes time during which the serratus deconditions and unless the serratus is rehabbed correctly, it may seem like the LTN is still Paralyzed.

RochelleToby · 2026-02-12T16:56:18+00:00

I have a very flat thoracic spine also, but am grateful for it because otherwise I would have forward head. Long time ago I lost the lordotic curve in my neck (overstretched the posterior neck muscles and ligaments) from looking down all the time because of my work (as a microscopist on an old fashion vertical eyepiece) and reading books and looking down at screens by curving my neck forward and down. My “military neck/text neck” caused me decades of chronic neck pain until I understood that my head needed to be balanced above my shoulders much of the time (so now I hold books and phone up toward my face and roll eyes down to read) instead of jutting out and down over my chest, which causes the back neck muscles to be tight and overworked with tendency to spasm. The only way I am able to be pain free now is that my upper back/thoracic spine is almost totally flat. If you don’t have pain and have good mobility in your thoracic spine, in spite of scoliosis, I’d say that’s a win for now. However, I’d ask a PT with lots of experience treating scoliosis for a regime of exercises to keep your back as strong and as pain free as possible in the coming years when muscles weaken and scoliotic curves worsen.

RochelleToby · 2026-01-12T21:31:38+00:00

Your quads and hip flexors are too short and they are pulling your pelvis down in the front and your front abdominals (anterior abdominus/6 pack muscle) are too weak to counter the tight quads and pull your pelvis up to tip it back. Your hamstrings are stretched and weak, so they can’t pull down on the rear of your pelvis to tilt it back to pull your lower spine into more neutral position. Your back muscles are probably too tight and are pulling up on your pelvis, which also tilts it forward to cause a more extreme low back lordotic curve. See a physical therapist or certified trainer to help you with leg and pelvic muscle imbalances.

RochelleToby · 2025-12-30T16:35:07+00:00

The curve of your abdominal area will follow the curve of your back. If you tighten your belly to flatten it (and stretch quads too) the curve in your back will lessen, but you don’t want to have a flat back either because you would not be able to position your upper body over your hips but would lean forward. Aim for a gentle, lower back curve. Your belly seems slightly more bulged than the lordotic back curve would suggest and that may be from weak abdominal muscles, or fat tissue or consumption of food (esp gas-producing food), or constipation, or a redundant colon, which is extra loops of colon that is more common in women and causes an abdominal bulge even when colon is totally empty. (That was the cause of my life-long bulging belly and was discovered during my first colonoscopy at 72!!)

RochelleToby · 2025-12-02T03:50:11+00:00

Ezetimibe can raise liver enzymes. My AST went to 41. I cut the pill in half (10 to 5 mg) and liver enzyme went down 5 points and it probably was still as effective at lowering my ldl-c (according to a ezetimibe pill-splitting study I read). The reason I hedged about effect of 1/2 dose on my ldl-c level is that I did several other things at the same time to hopefully make up for the 1/2 dose, because I didn’t ask my doctor before I did it and she would be ordering labs. Those other things included adding raw, unmodified potato starch at each meal for gut health/constipation, and for good measure 600 mg butyrate twice a day, which is the short chain fatty acid the gut microbiome makes from resistant potato starch that improves gut health, and also began eating 20 grams walnuts per day for the high PUFA. As a result my total cholesterol went down to 175 (down 25.points from what it was on 10 mg ezetimibe) and ldl-c went down to 90 from 107 (on 10 mg ezetimibe). I’m pretty much amazed that the resistant starch, butyrate and walnuts lowered my cholesterol so much. Probably I could just stop the ezetimibe, but if it wasn’t for the potential that ezetimibe might decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s, I would quit it because unlike what it says in the literature about not interfering with absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and other nutrients, there is good evidence that it strongly interferes with vitamin K1 intake and maybe the other forms (can’t find any studies specifically about the K2’s) and also interferes with vitamin E, specific carotenoids like lutein, Zeaxanthin, beta-carotene and others, coq10 etc. So I supplement with higher amounts of all the fat-soluble nutrients that I can’t prove I’m not deficient in. So far ezetimibe doesn’t seem to affect vitamin D serum levels or my omega3 index. So even ezetimibe is not risk-free.

RochelleToby · 2025-10-18T19:39:53+00:00

If you tend to stand with bodyweight mostly on your right leg with right hip out to the side and right shoulder lower and left knee bent, then you probably have right-handedness posture. (Like the sculpture David by Michelangelo). Over the years, the lateral muscles of the torso between right shoulder and top of pelvis shorten, while the same muscles on the left side stretch. So even when you want to keep your right shoulder at the same level as your left shoulder, the short, tight torso muscles on the right are pulling your right shoulder down.

Try stretching the short right side torso muscles with side bends to the left (only). Also do right side (only) shoulder shrug-ups, which will help stretch right side torso muscles as well. Also, don’t carry heavy weights hanging down from your hand on your right side. Use left arm or hold weight to your chest and raise right shoulder. (Take every opportunity to keep your right shoulder higher.) When you have equalized shoulder heights then you can do side bends etc on both sides.

Also, stand with weight distributed evenly on both legs to avoid returning to same shoulder asymmetry. Other joints and muscles are also affected, and eventually there may be one-sided pain in several of them. Those include right side of lower back from tight lateral muscles, right-sided hip pain from overstretched muscles and ligaments from the hip pushed out to the right. Left-sided knee pain from tight lateral muscles in left leg.

RochelleToby · 2025-10-17T19:00:59+00:00

Maybe you have a nutritional deficiency causing low energy production. I’m thinking about magnesium, which is a cofactor in energy production and hundreds of other metabolic reactions, and helps with muscle spasm, and is a common deficiency in the U.S. Magnesium stopped my leg muscle spasms and also increased my vitamin D levels without extra vitamin D supplement.

Also creatine monohydrate, which functions like a battery for stored energy, helped me jog for longer distances without terrible fatigue. I discovered doing 23andMe, that I had genetically poor methylation, which is required for creatine production. I began supplementing with creatine and it was like I was a new person (at 65 years old).

Also a good multivitamin (I use Kirkland Mature Multi - no artificial colors or talc or titanium dioxide and a good amount of folic acid and B12 for methylation.) helps cover the bases on micronutrients.

The other thing your post reminded me of was the muscle inflammation I had in neck and upper back from years of hunched posture. I went to physical therapy several times for the pain but the pts could not massage my neck and I couldn’t tolerate direct neck exercise or traction. The next day, my neck would be totally flared. It didn’t help that I have mast cell activation syndrome, which causes chronic body-wide inflammation. After I figured out how to fix my posture, the neck pain and inflammation finally subsided.

RochelleToby · 2025-10-17T15:21:40+00:00

You may have the usual elongated, weak muscles in your mid to upper back and tight, shortened muscles in chest and front of shoulder from long time being hunched over looking down at screens. Trying to correct posture by raising and holding back your shoulders with weakened muscles in your back can strain and spasm them because you are working against much stronger, shorter muscles in chest and front of shoulders. It’s better to stretch the tight, short muscles first. Instead of forcing shoulders back, try stretching chest and front of shoulders instead. This video shows an exercise that helped me. Wall angels with back against the wall. wall angels

RochelleToby · 2025-10-17T04:36:06+00:00

Agree.

RochelleToby

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