Posture - Part 1
It’s Neither Good Nor Bad
“I have bad posture” is something I hear daily in my clinic. There is nothing really “bad” about how you stand, but the positions you hold (or don’t) all day can determine if you move like a ninja or like the Tin Man. So, if you’ve been telling yourself an ongoing story about always being tight, hunched, stiff, etc, I’m here with some reassurance that you are, in fact, a normal human that is probably just lacking diversity of movement.
There is plenty of discussion regarding the efficacy of the idea of posture, and whether attempting to improve it is a useful tactic for decreasing pain. This discussion has been perpetuated by research indicating that there is a surprisingly poor correlation between pain and posture. The evidence seems to be pretty damning on this topic, which raises questions about whether looking at pain as an outcome measure actually makes sense when discussing posture. Moreover, even more basic questions still need to be asked regarding the very definition of posture.
Posture is the Product of Your Movement Variability
Posture is often discussed as a single, static element that represents one’s lack of mindfulness or genetic misfortune. My clinical experience, and current scientific literature say this belief is not only wrong, but also a harmful notion to the process of making postural change. One shouldn’t feel guilty or unfortunate that he or she is demonstrating an unskillful posture. Instead, there should be an understanding that posture is not a single static entity, but rather task dependent and constantly changing.
The secret to good posture is that one shouldn’t need to work for it when you are at rest. Your static postures during sitting, standing, and walking are a product of your cumulative movement throughout the day. Our bodies are built to adapt to the positions and activities we take on most frequently. If any of these positions and activities are done is excess, our positions and movement can become imbalanced. This imbalance is what is deemed by many as poor posture, but in reality it’s just the body doing what it does best: ADAPTING.
In order to prevent postural imbalances, it is unwise to attempt to simply make ergonomic adjustments to the positions we sustain too frequently. Instead, let’s consider our movement throughout the day. If we focus on proper positioning in training, it will inevitably transfer to our static postures. In this way, programming for any strength, conditioning, or fitness routine must involve a strong focus on developing positions that promote muscular balance and task transference, as opposed to just task completion.
For example, there are many ways to push yourself up from the ground when doing a push-up, but there are positioning subtleties that can either promote balanced muscular stability or feed habits of chronic positioning that we already practice too frequently. Thus, an individual’s movement practice should be about movement quality and variability as much as about cultivating strength and conditioning.
Mindless prescription of physical activity (i.e. 30-60 minutes of aerobic exercise; 3x10 of machine based resistance exercise) prioritizes strength and conditioning capacity over movement variability. This is in hopes that by blindly improving one’s quantity of movement, the quality of movement will also improve. Don’t get me wrong!!! In moderation, more movement is better than less movement. However, too much of the same movements can create similar problems as too little movement….
See Part 2…
