Real Height Enhancement (Part 2) :

by female bodybuilders on 6:58 PM in Tall girls

Resistance Exercises

Do these exercises 2-3 times a week to allow adequate recovery time. Use a slow cadence of 6-10 seconds per rep to ensure good form and eliminate momentum. Look all of these up on YouTube or bodybuilding.com to see what good form looks like.

* Deadlifts, rows, pull-downs (not behind the neck!) and chin-ups will all build up your back. Use 5-8 reps on the deadlift and 8-12 reps with everything else. Deadlifts can be dangerous; start out with less weight than you think you can lift, focus on perfecting your form and progress the weight slowly with each workout.
* Dumbbell lateral raises, rear deltoid exercises, the French press (dumbbell behind the neck) and dumbbell shrugs will work your shoulders. Surprisingly, working your shoulders can be as important as working your back, as the two muscle groups are closely linked. Make sure not to tuck your chin when you do these.
* Super-slow body weight lateral raises if you can't get to a gym. The same as a dumbbell lateral raise, but ten seconds up and ten seconds down. This may stop being helpful once you get strong enough that it isn't tiring.
* Be a penguin- place your fingertips against your shoulders, right hand to right hand to right shoulder and left hand to left shoulder. Now slowly raise and lower your arms, keeping your hands to your shoulders, as if flapping tiny penguin wings. You can do this a bit faster, maybe 6 seconds a rep. This one can also stop being useful once it stops being tiring, as there is no easy way to add weight.

Don't work your chest very much for a few weeks while initially working on your posture. Your chest and upper back/shoulders are antagonistic to each other; that is, they pull in opposite directions. Increase the ratio of upper back/rear shoulder strength to chest strength will roll your shoulders back to where they should be.

Hydration & Nutrition

You're probably saying "Huh?" at this point. But hydration is actually important to maintaining your posture long-term. The reason is that your inter-vertebral discs can gain or lose volume depending on how well hydrated you are. Gradual dehydration causes to most people to lose 1-3 inches of height over their adult lives. Maintaining proper hydration levels, as outline in our previous blog post, can prevent this. It may also allow you to regain a fraction of an inch of height, thought this degeneration is mostly non-reversible once it happens.

Loss of bone and muscle density can also contribute to loss of height as you age. Muscle loss makes it hard for people to stand up straight, while osteoporosis causes the vertebrae themselves to shrink. The media tends to portray osteoporosis as a female problem, but be assured that it can happen to men too. Get plenty of minerals and keep resistance training as you age and you can prevent this from happening.

Developing Better Habits

Part of the problem is that we spend so much of our time sitting or lying down, often with our spines bent into unnatural positions. Make sure you sit with good posture; move your chair close to your desk if that helps you avoid leaning forward. An ergonomic chair will help, or you can make most chairs more ergonomic by putting a cushion or rolled-up towel between it and your lower back. When sleeping, make sure to keep a straight back. Avoid the fetal position; sleeping on your back is ideal, and best of all you should use only one thin pillow to keep your neck almost totally straight.

Having a buddy work on this with you is another good way to enforce good habits. The two of you can spot and correct mistakes in each other's posture. Barring that, get into the habit of conducting a spot check on your posture whenever you hear a phone ring or see someone on the phone. This makes a useful mental trigger, as it is semi-random and happens fairly frequently. A rubber band around the wrist can work too.