Why Poor Posture Is So Common And How To Fix It
Today’s Topic Highlights:
Posture is a direct reflection of our physical lifestyle and psychological self-image.
Sitting is by far the most common contributor to postural distortion.
There are three main postural dysfunctions that prolonged sitting leads to: weakened posterior chain (back) muscular, tight hip flexors, and hunched over forward head posture.
You should be able to draw an invisible straight line from the ear to the lateral malleolus (ankle bone) in a standing position. This invisible line should bisect your ear, shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle on both sides of the body.
Opt for sitting on a stability ball rather than a standard chair, and adopt a daily stretching program. The hip flexors, Upper Traps, abdominals, and pec muscles should all be stretched on a regular basis.
Posture is the body’s starting point for all physical movement. Once posture becomes distorted, a wave of predictable compensation patterns and pain syndromes soon follows. Understanding how posture so commonly degenerates with age provides us with the keys to reclaiming our structural integrity.
Posture is a direct reflection of our physical lifestyle and psychological self-image. Everything we do, think, and feel influences and molds our posture. This includes the flexibility of our muscles, the strength (or weakness) of our back musculature, how active we are, our moods, our outlooks, and our beliefs. Plus the more obvious factors - the way we sit, how long we sit for, and what we sit on. All of these play a contributing role in the posture we default to.
Because sitting is the most common and egregious posture destroyer, we must focus on that first and foremost. There is no path forward without addressing our penchant for sedentary activities. Prolonged sitting ruins the body, plain and simple.
There are three main reasons that prolonged sitting distorts our posture and leads to pain syndromes:
Sitting requires little to no muscular engagement. This causes the thoracic (upper back) musculature to relax and eventually weaken from inadequate use. Inadequate use of the thoracic musculature, coupled with sitting slumped over for prolonged periods, inevitably leads to muscle atrophy and postural distortion.
Sitting creates tight hip flexors and weak glutes. Prolonged sitting places the hip flexor muscles in a perpetually shortened position. This shuts off and weakens the opposing muscles, the glutes. The combination of tight hip flexors and weak glutes is a common cause of low back pain.
Sitting while reading digital screens leads to rounded shoulders and forward head posture. Our head tends to migrate forward when we read a computer screen. This tendency is an unconscious attempt of the eyes to see things more clearly. For every inch our head habitually rests forward of its ideal position, there is an additional 10 pounds of pressure on the neck. That means that someone with 3 inches of forward head posture has the equivalent of a 30lbs dumbbell laying on top of their neck 24/7! Unsurprisingly, this is a common cause of neck problems and pain.