You fix your shoulders. But hours later, they’re rounded again.
Maybe you’ve spent hours stretching your pecs or pulling resistance bands behind your back. You’ve done wall angels. Rows. Retraction drills. Every video promises a fix, but none of it sticks.
By the end of the day, your shoulders are creeping forward again. Your neck feels tight. Your upper back aches. And no matter how hard you work, it feels like your body is stuck in a loop like it doesn’t want to stay upright.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Most people think rounded shoulders are just a strength or flexibility issue. So they keep hammering the same muscle groups. But the truth is, if your shoulders keep falling forward no matter what you do, the root cause might be hidden somewhere completely different.
What if it’s not about the muscles at all… but about how your brain controls those muscles?
In this blog, we’ll show you why three simple exercises work when nothing else has and why real posture correction starts with smarter input, not more effort.
If you’re tired of chasing the same symptoms, this might finally connect the dots.
Now that we’ve addressed the frustration the endless cycle of fixing and re-fixing your shoulders it’s time to look under the hood.
Your shoulder is one of the most mobile joints in the human body. But that mobility comes at a cost: stability.
At the heart of shoulder function is a complex interaction between joints, muscles, and control systems. Two primary joints drive this movement: the glenohumeral joint, where the arm bone meets the shoulder blade, and the surrounding musculature that supports and guides it.
Everyone knows the rotator cuff four key muscles that stabilize the glenohumeral joint:
Supraspinatus: Ends at the top of the humerus and is susceptible to impingement.
Infraspinatus: Located below the spine of the scapula and is responsible for external rotation and stabilization of the shoulder joint.
Teres minor: Located right next to the infraspinatus; it helps to externally rotate your shoulder when your arm is abducted to the side.
Subscapularis: The only rotator cuff muscle that performs an internal rotation of the shoulder. It’s found on the inside of the shoulder blade.
But here’s the problem: most rehab protocols stop here.
What they miss is that the shoulder blade itself, the scapula is the socket of the joint, and it’s controlled by a much larger network of muscles. In fact, 17 muscles cross this region, and several of them play a bigger role in how your shoulder moves than the cuff ever could.
These are your periscapular muscles and they’re often the missing link. If these muscles don’t activate or coordinate properly, the socket moves out of alignment. That throws off the entire shoulder complex, leading to compensation, impingement, and pain.
So if you’ve been focusing on isolated shoulder drills, but your scapular control is off, your results won’t stick.
What’s Really Driving Rounded Shoulders?
It’s easy to blame screens or bad posture habits. Yes, looking down all day trains your body into a forward slump. But that’s only part of the picture.
What’s rarely talked about is how the brain adapts to that slumped position and starts reinforcing it as the “new normal.”
Here’s what happens:
When your head moves forward, your scapula loses its natural rhythm. The muscles that stabilize your shoulder joint get out of sync. Your brain always trying to conserve energy re-maps that faulty pattern into your default.
Over time, the muscles meant to hold you upright get weaker. And the ones compensating? They stay tight, overactive, and strained. This is where neck stiffness, shoulder impingement, and tension headaches start creeping in.
So fixing rounded shoulders isn’t about standing up straight or just doing rows and wall angels. It’s about resetting the brain’s default and restoring balance to the system controlling your posture.
As you can see on the picture on the left, the shoulder is protracted forward. After working on proprioception in conjunction with corrective exercises, you can now see that on the picture right that the shoulders are now shifted back. By acting on your nervous system we were able to re-wire his brain to process incoming data in a new way. The end results are the activation of the posterior chain. Here is a list of some of the exercises we performed.
Now that you understand the deeper cause, let’s move into the 3 exercises that actually start fixing it from the ground up.
Note that heavyweights are not necessary for these exercises. You’d be surprised how challenging these exercises can be with weights that are lighter than you would think you need.
#1 -Bent-Over Dumbbell Flys (or bent over rear deltoid raises)
Here’s how to do it:
-Lower your body at the hips with a slight bend to the knee, keeping your back parallel to the floor.
-With your arms holding the dumbells near your shins, and still in a bent-over position, raise your arms straight out so your arms are parallel to the floor.
-Imagine your back as a hinge and use a full range of motion to try to pinch your back together.
#2- Barbell Shrugs
Here’s how to do it:
-Stand tall and holding a barbell with both hands, palms facing towards your legs.
-Raise the barbell up by lifting your shoulders, keeping the distance of the barbell to your body the same (the bar should be almost resting against your legs). Remember to lift with your shoulders and not with your arms.
-Slowly return to the starting position and repeat.
#3 Barbell Upright Row
Transform Your Posture and Correct Rounded Shoulders
Struggling with rounded shoulders, upper back tension, or poor posture? The solution starts with your feet. Poor foot mechanics create imbalances that travel up the body, pulling your shoulders forward and straining your upper back.
Our Therapeutic Insoles activate your midfoot and realign posture from the ground up.
By correcting your foundation, you can:
✔️ Reverse rounded shoulders and reset your alignment
✔️ Release chronic tension in your traps and upper back
✔️ Walk, lift, and sit with more confidence and ease
What to do next:
If you’re tired of guessing and want the real protocol that resets posture from the ground up, join Posturepro+.
We’ll show you the drills no one else is teaching. We’ll address what everyone else overlooks. And you’ll finally stop chasing symptoms.
👉 Subscribe to Posturepro+ now — it’s free.
References:
Day, B. L., Steiger, M. J., Thompson, P. D., & Marsden, C. D. (1993, September). Effect of vision and stance width on human body motion when standing: Implications for afferent control of lateral sway. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1143881/
Kavounoudias, A., Roll, R., & Roll, J. P. (2001, May 01). Foot sole and ankle muscle inputs contribute jointly to human erect posture regulation. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2278585/
Oyarzo, C. A., Villagrán, C. R., Silvestre, R. E., Carpintero, P., & Berral, F. J. (2014). Postural control and low back pain in elite athletes comparison of static balance in elite athletes with and without low back pain. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23963269
Shaikh, A. G., & Zee, D. S. (2017, December 19). Eye Movement Research in the Twenty-First Century-a Window to the Brain, Mind, and More. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12311-017-0910-5
Wang, Z., & Newell, K. M. (2012, September 19). Asymmetry of foot position and weight distribution channels the inter-leg coordination dynamics of standing. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-012-3212-7
Nejati P, Safarcherati A, Karimi F. Effectiveness of Exercise Therapy and Manipulation on Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Pain Physician. 2019;22(1):53-61.
Tamer S, Oz M, Ulger O. Effects of sacroiliac joint mobilization on hamstring muscle flexibility and quadriceps muscle strength. Orthop J Sports Med. 2014 Nov; 2(3 Suppl). doi:10.1177/2325967114S00174
- Wall Angels to open the chest and engage the upper back.
- Rows to strengthen the back muscles.
- Shoulder Blade Squeezes to improve shoulder alignment.
To prevent rounded shoulders:
- Address sensory misalignment with tools like Posturepro Therapeutic Insoles. These insoles activate the midfoot to stabilize your posture from the ground up, helping to realign the brain-body connection and reduce tension in your upper back and shoulders.
