One week workout plan for better posture & strength

If your lifestyle involves many hours of sitting, you’re probably going to need this one week workout plan for better posture and strength! These are some of our favorite workouts to tone the core, the back, the lower body, everything! You don’t need a subscription – all the workouts for this exercise plan are available for free on Youtube, feel free to change workouts as you like!

Why Better Posture and Strength

So why this workout plan for better posture and strength? Because apparently, we're self-absorbed, mkay? We need to seriously do something about the hunchback, about our neck and lower back pain. Call it selfishness, call it self-care, we don’t care, we're tired of being in pain. We can’t even joke about the hunchback without shedding a tear anymore.

So, painful hunchback. How am we going to survive? Well, after the panic attack, we realized something. We know for a fact that all our pain comes from sitting long hours and from having weak core muscles.

So the focus for this exercise plan will be to strengthen the core muscles and also, to open up the muscles on the front of the body – the hips, the chest, the belly – everything. Of course, the body isn’t just core or the front of the body. Everything is connected and working together.

So we’ll be incorporating strengthening back and lower body workouts as well to help build muscle. Long-term a regular exercise routine is important for preserving bone health and keeping your spine healthy.

Lifestyle Changes

As you’ll see below this workout plan for better posture and strength won’t require you to be in the gym for hours every day. 15-20 minutes a day can be enough to strengthen those postural muscles. However, though a 30-minute workout every day is a great start, if that’s all you do, it won’t help much. It’s how you spend the rest of your time that makes a bigger difference.

For example, when it comes to weight loss, it’s the energy you spend outside the gym is more important than what you do in the gym. We read a interesting study where they compared the lifestyles of obese and lean “couch potatoes”. Turns out, the obese participants were seated for 164 more minutes a day than the ones who were lean. Note, we’re not even talking about moving, we’re just talking about standing. The authors further estimated that the obese participants could burn an additional 350 kcal a day if they didn’t spend those 164 minutes sitting. That’s a weight loss of 15 kg per year, if the energy intake remained the same. You can read more here.

Same with posture. Sit hunched over a phone for 8 hours and exercise for 1 – you’ll still look like Quasimodo on a good day. So, the three habits besides the workouts that we're committing to will be 1) taking more breaks from our sitting marathons, 2) walking at least 7,000 steps every day and 3) being more mindful of our posture overall. To always engage the core and to allow myself to take up space whatever we do, wherever we go.

How To Create Your Own Workout Plan

To create a workout plan you need 3 things:

a goal
workouts
a plan

This week’s goal will be to increase our overall strength, but especially core strength, so we can improve our posture and reduce pain. The workout split will look like this:

Monday: Full Body Barre
Tuesday: Back And Core Strength
Wednesday: Lower Body
Thursday: Yoga Stretch
Friday: Arms and Shoulders
Saturday: Pilates Powerhouse
Sunday: Yoga stretch

Equipment

This workout plan calls for two things: dumbbells and a workout or yoga mat. Whatever you do, go at your own pace and use the weights for your level of fitness.

One Week Workout Plan For Better Posture And Strength

So, we went on Youtube, looked through some of our favorite workouts and created this 7-Day workout plan for better posture and strength! We're excited about it.

Day 1: Full Body Barre

We love this barre workout by POPSUGAR Fitness, it is one of our favorites. It’s fast, it will make you sweat, it will stretch you, it will make you feel notable. We always feel so much more open in our shoulders. The solid workout for posture! Here you don’t need any equipment.

Day 2: Back & Core

We love Caroline’s workouts, they’re challenging, but the time seems to fly, because she switches things up! So, to improve your posture – do this 15-minute workout. We thought we'd crumble and cry with our weak back and core, but it was great!

Day 3: Lower Body Workout

In order to improve your posture and gain strength, it’s best to work on the whole body. We’ve done upper body, now it’s time to even things out and work the lower body. We've done this workout several times and we love it! It’s 20 minutes and you need a set of dumbbells, but we've also used a kettlebell for this one. We cannot quite walk without tears in our eyes the next day, but it’s good. We found Heather about a year ago after we bought a kettlebell and didn’t know what to do with it, so we did one of her workouts. She’s awesome, make sure to check out her Youtube channel, for other challenging workouts as well!

Day 4: Yoga Stretch

This is, obviously, a favorite part of our week. Whenever we get to do this yoga routine by YOGATX We feel like a brand new person. It’s relaxing and opening and stretches everything – the solid workout for posture! We highly recommend doing this on your off days, you’ll appreciate it after the first three days.

Day 5: Arms and Shoulders

Our arms almost fell off doing this one and we couldn’t see anything from sweat. This workout by Heather Robertson targets the biceps, triceps and shoulders. It’s 30 minutes and you need dumbbells, a stability ball and an exercise mat. If you don’t have a stability ball, you can do the exercises on the floor.

Day 6: Pilates Powerhouse

Strengthen your core with this Pilates workout for better posture. This routine by efit30 is notable! In 30 minutes you’ll strengthen the entire powerhouse, which is the center of your body and includes your abdominal, lower back and glute muscles. Strengthening the powerhouse is important when it comes to your spine health and posture.