Sitting at a desk for eight hours a day is slowly ruining your posture—and you might not even realize it yet. In fact, 80% of adults experience back pain at some point in their lives, often triggered by poor posture from extended sitting. I get it. I’ve been there. As an athlete turned desk jockey, I felt my body tighten up, and my muscles rebel against the hours I spent sitting. It was frustrating, even painful. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be that way.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire workspace or squeeze in an hour at the gym just to feel better. What you need is a smarter approach, one that integrates small changes into your daily routine that actually work. The good news? I’ve developed a system that targets the root causes of poor posture and delivers results. This isn’t just a stretch-and-go fix—it’s a plan to get you out of pain, improve your mobility, and rebuild your body to move the way it was meant to.
So if you’re ready to stand taller, move better, and finally ditch the neck, back, and hip pain that’s been holding you back, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s dive into how you can make this happen—starting now.
My name is Jake Richardson. I’ve spent my whole life as an athlete, but I’ve also experienced the reality of being a desk jockey for a few years. Transitioning from intense training sessions to sitting for hours on end was not just painful and frustrating—it felt like a betrayal of my own body. I could feel my posture deteriorating and my muscles tightening as if my body was rebelling against the desk I was glued to.
As the days at my desk dragged on, I became determined to find a solution. I didn’t want to finish each day feeling like I had lost all mobility in my neck, shoulders, back, and hips. Sure, sneaking off to the handicapped bathroom to stretch offered some relief (yes, I really did that), but it wasn’t enough.
I realized quickly that random stretching throughout the day was just a temporary fix. I needed a real strategy—a plan to not only improve my mobility and strengthen the right muscles but also to restructure my daily routine. I wanted to work smarter, not harder; I wanted to avoid that constant feeling of tightness and finally rid myself of pain.
That’s why I’m now standing here at my desk, writing this blog to share the formula that completely transformed my posture and erased my pain. This isn’t just another fitness routine—it’s a comprehensive approach that addresses the underlying issues causing discomfort. It’s about more than just exercises; it’s about rethinking how we move, sit, and stand throughout the day.
In this plan, you’ll learn how to take actionable steps to get back to a place where you feel no pain and are more mobile than you’ve ever been. Whether you’re an athlete or someone who spends hours at a desk, this guide is for you. You don’t have to accept pain and stiffness as part of your daily life. With the right approach, you can reclaim your body and move freely again.
To learn how to improve your posture, watch the detailed video explanation of the techniques covered in this blog below.
In this plan, you’ll learn how to take actionable steps to get back to a place where you feel no pain and are more mobile than you’ve ever been. Whether you’re an athlete or someone who spends hours at a desk, this guide is for you. You don’t have to accept pain and stiffness as part of your daily life. With the right approach, you can reclaim your body and move freely again.
Your Beliefs
I hear a lot of people say that they have bad posture. But I rarely hear people say what they are doing to fix their posture. Now, this is likely due to one of two reasons:
- They don’t know how to fix their posture
- They don’t care to fix their posture
If you fall into either category and haven’t yet experienced pain in your neck, shoulders, back, or hips from poor posture, it’s likely only a matter of time.
So, it’s a good thing you are here reading this blog so you can figure out what you need to do to improve your posture before it begins to affect how you feel, both physically and mentally.
Open to a Lifestyle Change?
However, the insights you’re about to read will only be effective if you’re open to embracing change. Many people become stuck, assuming their current circumstances are fixed and unchangeable. That is not true.
This mindset isn’t just for fixing your posture; it can be applied to any change you want to make in your life. Whether losing weight, gaining muscle, running a marathon, making 100k per month, or breaking a world record, the mind is often the limiting factor.
Thus, we must recognize that our brain prefers comfort, potentially deceiving us to maintain the status quo.
Why Does Our Brain Limit Us?
Because it likes the path of least resistance.
Now that we know this, we can move forward with a clean slate and understand that we CAN improve our posture. Our body is capable of change.
All you need to do is be open-minded to the idea that you can facilitate that change. With patience and perseverance, you can move forward, enhance your posture, get out of pain, and feel your best.
Environment & Habits
Before we dive into the solutions, understand that poor habits and a negative environment will detrimentally affect your posture. I know you probably think, “But I spend all day sitting at a desk,” or “My job requires me to be sitting all day.”
If that’s your initial reaction, shifting your mindset and beliefs is crucial. Even when confined to a desk all day, there are many actions you can take to lessen the impact of prolonged sitting.
Ready to change your mindset? Download the free course here.
Your environment dictates the position in which you spend most of your day. This is NOT something I am asking you to do a full overhaul on. Rather, I would like you to be aware of the position in which you spend most of your day.
Even if you sit at a desk all day, incorporating movement can significantly enhance your physical and mental well-being. However, if you can move away from your desk throughout the day (which you should), we can positively change our posture.
Again, I am not asking you to do an overhaul and completely change your desk set-up, and I won’t be giving you a multi-step morning and nighttime routine.
The Method to The Madness Program
“Stretch the muscles you can see in the mirror and strengthen the muscles you can’t see in the mirror” – Joe DeFrancco.
Joe said it best: More often than not, the muscles we can see in the mirror are overworked and tight, and they tend to take over due to their tonic nature. While the muscles we can’t see in the mirror may be tight, they are often weak and underdeveloped, lacking strength and the ability to connect.
Take the glutes, for example. Here are the questions I ask my clients:
- Can you flex one butt cheek and then the other?
- Do you know what it feels like to have sore glutes?
Now, I know that they may sound odd to ask. However, these are important questions to ask.
Why Do I Ask These Questions?
Because if a person can not FEEL their glutes working, they are more likely to feel their back working.
When dealing with lower back pain, we want to strengthen above and below the back and the core. We look to the mid back, glutes, and core are the three areas that protect our lower back and provide it with the stability it needs to be safe, especially under load.
This is my thought process for everyone I work with (whether they have back pain or not). Back to strengthening and stretching the right muscles, we allow our body to open up when we mobilize the muscles that we can see in the mirror
- Pecs
- Bices
- Traps
- Hip Flexors
- Quads
Now, stretching alone is not enough to improve our posture. While it may help us feel better briefly, it will not provide us with the lasting change required to improve our posture and make real physical changes.
After we stretch these key areas, we create “a window of trainability,” and we temporarily give our bodies more mobility to access certain ranges we once did not have.
Now, here is where the strengthening comes in. We can move better after the stretching. Now, we look to use that newfound and temporary range of motion to strengthen those ranges.
We strengthen key muscles like:
- Glutes
- Spinal erectors
- Lats
- Mid traps
- Rear deltoids
- Rear deltoids
- Triceps
The only exception to this rule is the core. The abdominal muscles are ones you can see in the mirror. However, this muscle group needs to be trained and strengthened instead of mobilized.
This will help us solidify our newfound posture. Strengthening these areas AFTER we stretch the key areas above will provide us with the balance our body has been waiting for.
Mobilization
follow the regression for each stretch below, if need be.
This is because we want to feel these stretches in the right areas and not push our joints, tendons, and ligaments into and beyond their range of motion.
You want to be at a 6 or a 7 out of 10 on the suck meter, yes, the suck meter. These stretches and mobilizations will not feel good, but they shouldn’t feel so bad that you are short on breath and left a sweaty mess. We can save that state for our conditioning sessions…
Let’s get into seven key mobilizations that will help correct your posture, give you that window of trainability to strengthen the right muscles, and put you on your way to feeling your best. We are going to start from the feet up.
Equipment you will need:
- Lacrosse ball
- Foam roller
- Mat (yoga or thick foam workout mat would be best)
Follow along with each video for an in-depth demonstration of how you can best perform each exercise. I will also put how much time you should spend on each one.
Exercise | Duration |
2 Min Each | |
90s Each | |
2 Min Each | |
90s Each | |
2 Min Each | |
2 Min Each | |
2 Min Each |
Do you have to do ALL of these mobilizations every day?
maybe
To answer that question, you will need to try them all, see how they feel, assess which ones you need to spend the most time on (the ones that are the hardest), and then tackle those as strengthening.
Free posture course: Want to improve your posture in just three weeks? Download it now.
Strengthening
Now, we have taken care of those tight muscles that hold us in positions that cause pain and restriction. It’s time to solidify that newfound position by strengthening key muscles that will help you ease your body to hold onto those positions.
One of the most important components of this is feeling the right muscles work. So, what I mean by that is simply focusing on contracting the correct muscle when you are following along with the exercises below.
This is important because building that mind-muscle connection to the muscle is key to not only feeling it work, obviously, but it will allow you to retrain your body. Hence, you know what working the right muscles feels like because some muscles in our body tend to take over, like our:
- Quads
- Traps
- Pecs
- Lower back
Then we have muscles that, more often than not, don’t want to work on too much:
- Core
- Mid back
- Glutes
While this isn’t to say that those muscle groups are not working—because, in all reality, they are—they aren’t working hard enough to support the posture your body needs.
Now, let’s get into these seven key movements to strengthen the right muscles and put us into better positions to minimize pain, feel better, and stand taller.
You will not need any equipment, maybe just an exercise mat and or a thick foam mat for your knee.
Exercise | Sets | Reps / Duration |
3 | 8-12 reps each | |
3 | 30-90s hold | |
3 | 15-30s in each position | |
3 | 8-12 reps on each side | |
3 | 20-50 reps on each side | |
3 | 8-12 reps on each side | |
3 | 15-20 reps |
Diligently work on the ones you struggle with, as you will get the most bang for your buck with those.
Putting It Together - Final Thoughts
Now that we have gone over your beliefs around change and how changing our beliefs and mindset is the first step to improving our posture (or any change, for that matter).
We also touched on the importance of our environment and how our environment and habits play a critical role in how successful we will be when it comes to enhancing our posture.
The big key here is bringing length and mobility to the muscles that we can see in the mirror while strengthening the muscles we can not see in the mirror. Now, you are probably wondering how to put this all together.
Whether you have a forward head posture, a bad back, or hips that you can’t seem to loosen, you need a plan, which is precisely why I have developed this three-week program.
This program will provide you with daily exercises and stretches that you can do from the comfort of your home to improve your posture.