Do you have a good posture? A discussion about postures

My generation wasn’t as nagged at about "straighten up the back" or "walk with a straight back" as previous generations were. On those days children and adolescents were told even in school to correct threir posture. Good or bad to avoid the nagging? Perhaps mostly bad. Why? Because today, I see even worse postures in the next generation youngsters; that might be due to us nagging too little about their postures.

The famous slouchy
posture, check your friends,
family etc, I promise you*ll
see it!

The strange armé 
posture

Oh yes, you've seen a lot of youths sitting like this. Even if I
 have good  mobility, I'll never be able to achieve the same 
degree of flexion of the back as they can after years of 
stretching their ligaments and muscles in this C-shape...

“Straighten up your back!”; is it the right way to express one self? If I have a patient and ask him to straighten up, I see most often a strange form of military posture where people pull in their stomachs, push out their chests and lean the upper body backward. That's not really what we want to achieve when talking about the importance of good posture ... A good posture involves placing the body segments on top of each other in balance with as little energy expenditure as possible, which puts the joints in neutral position, and that means happy and healthy joints. Easy? Yes, for a child of 2-8 years. They are experts at this. Then we go slowly downhill; especially when we hit the teens; because of too much sitting. And usually at this age children begin to specialize in sports and train too much homogeneous patterns of movement, or playing computer games, playing with iPads, smartphones, etc. The worst thing we can do with our bodies in the subject of posture is to sit most of the day.

How do I instruct a patient to correct their posture? I always start from the bottom:

• Feet; rock back and forth on your feet a couple of times, and find the center of gravity directly in front of the ankle of the foot - but make sure you have good contact with the floor in the following three points; the base of the big and little toe and on the middle of the heel.
• Knees; tighten your thighs and push your knees back, then relax and bend your knees very slightly. Repeat a few times, and then find a middle position - where you feel that your knees are loose and thigh rests on the lower leg without having to contract your muscles.
• The pelvis; this is difficult for many! Tilt the pelvis a little backwards (ie round the lower back) and then tilt the pelvis forward (ie, arch your lower back - like a duck). Repeat a few times and then try to find a middle position with a slight lordosis of the lumbar spine without having to press the pelvis in any direction. You should have a neutral lordosis as we call it.
• Rib Cage and shoulders; inhale and push up the chest - breathe out and sink down. Repeat a few times. When you finish try to find a slight lift of the sternum.
• Shoulders; do a couple of big circles with your shoulder – lift up ventrally and down dorsally. Relax your shoulders after finishing down dorsally.
• Neck and head; Elongate your neck from the spine, push the most prominent part of your head upwards without tilting it back - tuck your chin in a bit and keep your eyes on the horisontal level.

See the movie about correcting the posture here!

Once you found the position, imagine that you lift the entire spine from the pelvis. I once heard a yoga teacher instruct the position of the spine in a poetic way; imagine that the spine and its vertebras are like a string with pearls, and that you stretch the string so that the beads are pulled upward. Beautiful way to express posture correction on.

But unfortunately this is not enough for everyone. As I have in previous blog posts pointed out that today's society with certain type of training methods (pumping up certain muscles), the sitting desk work where we have arms in front of us at a desk for several hours / days etc has altered the anatomy around the joints. A pull toward the stronger muscles is now created. It may also be that certain muscles are shortened or too active and it gets too hard to try to keep the joints in neutral position with the fatigued or weak muscle on the other side. A relatively simple example:

Chest muscles have a tendency to become strong, short and overactive compared to the back muscles. Think of all the guys who want to pump up the breasts, you know how their posture looks... But the muscles are not strong, short and overactive just by improper training, but also of our everyday movements and positions; example what we therapists hate – sitting office work. I can try to instruct that person in the correct posture, but if the chest muscles pull the shoulders constant, the person cannot assume a correct posture more than a few minutes, or maybe even less. It’s too much work, hence one must also work on getting the body into balance. And this applies not only to the torso, it’s equally important for the muscles of the trunk, pelvis and hips, as well as around the neck.

Therefore, I cannot in this blog solve the problem for everyone with bad posture, but for those who do not have so many problems with stiffnesses or weaknesses can work on their posture as instructed above.

For the others; for God's sake, start a more balanced life! Book an appointment with a physiotherapist or the likes and work on your physical problems...!

Well, those are my thoughts anyway :)