Also called tech neck, or nerd neck
Forward head posture
Forward head posture is your head drifting ahead of the line your shoulders sit on. Every centimetre forward adds load your neck was not built to carry all day, which is why it so often shows up as a dull ache between the shoulder blades rather than as neck pain.
How to tell if you have it
- Side-on in a photo, the opening of your ear sits ahead of the tip of your shoulder rather than stacked over it.
- You get a dull ache at the base of your neck or between your shoulder blades by mid-afternoon.
- Standing with your back against a wall, the back of your head does not reach the wall without you tipping your chin up.
- Headaches that start at the back of the skull and creep forward.
The free posture test measures this from a side-on photo — look at the Head over shoulders score. It runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
Why it happens
- Looking down at a phone — the single biggest contributor, and the hardest to notice yourself doing.
- A monitor below eye level, which pulls the head forward as well as down.
- Deep neck flexors weakening while the muscles at the back of the neck stay permanently switched on to hold your head up.
- Rounded shoulders, which change where your shoulders sit and therefore where 'forward' begins.
The exercises that address it
All bodyweight, all doable in the space beside a desk. Each one is in the app with a spoken instruction and a timer.
- 01
Chin Tuck
The core correction. It strengthens the deep neck flexors that let your head sit back over your shoulders without effort.
- 02
SCM Stretch
Releases the muscle at the front and side of the neck that shortens when your head lives forward.
- 03
Isometric Neck Strengthening
Builds endurance in the deep stabilisers — the quality you need to hold a position for hours, which is what posture actually is.
- 04
Upper Trapezius Stretch
Releases the muscles that have been holding your head up all day, which is why they ache.
- 05
Wall Posture Check
Standing against a wall gives you an external reference for where neutral is. Most people cannot feel it without one.
How long it takes
The ache usually eases inside a couple of weeks. Changing where your head sits by default takes longer, and it will not hold at all unless your screen setup changes too — you cannot out-exercise eight hours a day of looking down.
When to see a clinician instead
Nothing on this page is a substitute for an assessment. Skip the exercises and book an appointment if any of this applies:
- Numbness, tingling, pins and needles or weakness in an arm or hand.
- Dizziness, visual changes, or headaches that are new, severe or different from your usual.
- Neck pain following a fall, a collision or whiplash.
Questions
- How do I know if I have forward head posture?
- Take a photo of yourself standing side-on, relaxed, and look at where the opening of your ear sits relative to the tip of your shoulder. If the ear is clearly ahead of the shoulder, that is forward head posture. The posture test on this site measures that offset from the photo for you.
- Can forward head posture be reversed?
- Postural forward head — the kind that comes from habit — responds well to strengthening the deep neck flexors and fixing your screen height. Forward head that comes from a structural change in the spine is a different matter and needs assessment by a clinician.
- Do posture correctors help?
- A brace holds you in position while you wear it, but it does the work your muscles should be doing, so nothing gets stronger. They can be useful as a short-term reminder alongside exercises. As the whole plan, they tend not to change anything.
- How should I set up my monitor?
- Top of the screen at or just below eye level, about an arm's length away. If you work on a laptop, that means a stand plus a separate keyboard — a laptop alone puts the screen and the keyboard at heights that cannot both be right.