Monday, March 16, 2015

Postive Posture

This is a good blog about posture from the UK.  Follow along and learn the importance of posture!


Find Your Own Good Standing Posture

facebooktwitterlinkedinmailby featherNo matter what we’re doing, we’re in some kind of posture – stooping, leaning, sitting and, of course, standing. Have you ever wondered what your own Good Standing Posture is? If so, here’s the blog and video that will teach you how to find it. A lesson for life.

What is Standing Posture?

    • It’s when you’re standing!
    • It’s always comfortable.
    • Your standing posture is probably not textbook perfect and so can be improved.
There is a way to stand that is balanced and your centre of gravity falls through certain parts of your body. In this way, we stand efficiently and the deep postural muscles are working. These muscles support our joints and can work for long periods without fatigue. However, if we don’t stand in good posture, our centre of gravity falls through different parts of our body and different muscles must work to keep us there.
This is not so good because the muscles now working are not postural muscles and can fatigue.
This causes pain.

For example: Standing with your chin poking forwards

Now, this is something many of us do because we’re sat at a desk for hours, and that encourages the “Tortoise Posture”. When you stand like this, the muscles that must come into play to stop us from dropping our heads are the middle fibres of trapezius, and they run from the top of our shoulders to the base of our neck. This muscle can’t work for long periods and is a big source of pain for many people. So improving your posture will help reduce the activity of this muscle and thus you will get less pain.
To help improve your head and neck posture, you must be able to hold your head back a little so that your ear is in line with the middle of your shoulder when observed from the side. If you’ve stood with your head forwards for many years this will not happen quickly. You need to practice the Retraction Exercise which is on my previous blog. This will allow you to stretch the tight structures that are stopping you from holding a good head posture. You must do this about three times a day to have a gentle, effective stretch.
So, to find our good, pain-free standing posture this is what you do…

  • Stand with your back against a wall with heels 2cms away from the wall.
  • Your bottom, upper back, and if possible the back of your head should be resting on the wall. If your head won’t reach the wall don’t strain.
    In this position there should be just enough space to slide your hand in between the lower back inward curve and the wall.
  • If there is too much space, flatten this inward curve until your hand is touching the wall on one side and your back on the other side.
  • This will be your good standing posture for the lower back.
  • Whilst finding this position, keep your knees straight and don’t drop your chest down.

Mini Squat Exercise

To help you to learn and adapt this position, find your good posture position as explained above or on the video then…
  1. Whilst maintaining this good posture, slowly bend the knees to do a mini squat…
  2. …and then straighten your knees keeping the good postural position.
This will help you to learn the new, correct standing posture.
Now, the Retraction Exercise in my previous post will help you cope with a particularly common fault that causes poor standing posture. But of course, there are many other bad habits we can slip into, and we’ll look at some of them in future posts. But remember, once you know what good posture is you can work towards it.
So try out the advice we’ve covered today, and let me know how you get on!

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