A good way to mobilise a stiff upper back is to get a theraband, throw it around your upper back, high under the armpits, grab each end with your hands and straighten your arms out from your chest.
Now push your upper back into the band, looking down a bit. Swallow, so the tongue is in the roof of the mouth and cross your eyes, looking at the bridge of your nose. Pray the wind doesn’t change direction.
Next, keeping your arms stuck straight out, push your chest out, as if drawing it away from the band. Smile like a loon, squeeze your eyes tight shut and bring your teeth together. Keep your arms and shoulders completely still and your chin level with the floor.
The point of the face pulling is not to make you look foolish: the parts of the brainstem that encourage flexion (or forward bending) are activated by any tongue exercise ((A popular tongue drill is called ‘Round the world’: run your tongue around the outside of the teeth. Do this 6 – 30 times in each direction.)) and by crossing the eyes. When you smile bigly, squeeze the eyes and bring the teeth together, this helps activate the part of the brainstem that encourages opening up, or extension.
Upper backs need to be able to both flex and extend. Most attention is paid to upper backs that have become rounded over time, but, particularly if there has been a head or neck trauma, the upper back can become stiff and straight – a military upper 
back. This type of upper back needs to flex and extend just as much as a rounded back.
The hardest part of the exercise is keeping the shoulders out of it. For most people, at first their upper back movement is small. If you find you seem to be able to move forwards and backwards a lot, the chances are high you’re just moving your shoulders.
To regain upper back mobility takes time and patience – perseverance is king!! We all love the quick fix, we are bombarded with promises of quick fixes; we are surrounded by hyperbole and misleading promises. We are told to expect deterioration because of age, therefore why bother? This latter is a load of old cobblers, but there is no room for complacency when it comes to aging well.
I chose these pictures of Roger Federer and Tiger Woods because we can see how they are both staring at the contact point with the ball – and we can clearly see Tiger Woods is still staring after the ball has been hit. A quick google search will show Federer does the same, if not more so. This is a critical skill and requires good rotation from the entire spine to do it as well as these two can. Stiff upper backs make this skill hard to hone.
All sports need excellent length and rotation from the spine – only then can we unleash our in-built whip to gain full power, control and accuracy.
A safety note – do check your band is not cut or perished. It’s nasty if they suddenly rip under tension.
