Posture - Part 2
Awareness, and How to Make it Work For us
In Part 1 of this posture series, I discussed how posture is neither “good” nor “bad”. The best posture is one that is fluid and always changing.
Let’s continue on this topic!
Counterbalance Your Life
The idea of improving movement quality and increasing variability goes way beyond one’s time at the gym. The common patterns of one’s entire day need to be understood so that behavioral change can be implemented. This is not to say that if we sit all day at work then we need to get a new job. That’s just not practical. Nor does it mean that we must be obsessed with maintaining an upright posture or “drawing our abdomens in” all day long. It simply calls for AWARENESS — awareness of the positions that are most frequently adopted and strategies for counterbalancing them.
Guidelines for this awareness are three-fold:
i. Understand the chronic positions you adopt
Often postural counterbalances are subtle, and developing improved body awareness becomes much more important than simply adjusting your position. This improved body education can come in many forms, such as independent reading physiology, working with movement therapists such as a physical therapist, or cultivating a versatile movement practice. It’s important to know that ultimately YOU have the best opportunity to understand your own body. It can be a gradual process to refine your own body awareness, but once developed, understanding the positions and movements that are healthy versus harmful to your specific body becomes much easier.
ii. Separate times you must be stationary and times you choose to be stationary
It’s important to have a plan of attack for positioning throughout your day. Practically speaking, if you sit all day at work, acknowledge it. Then minimize the time you sit when in the comfort of your home. Likewise, if you are on your feet all day, don’t be afraid to spend some time vegging out on the couch. One stationary position is not necessarily better than the other (i.e. standing is not better than sitting). It’s the one that you do most frequently that will usually lead to problems.
iii. Expand your positional repertoire
It’s important to have other positions at your disposal when attempting to adapt new movement variability. For example, sitting in a chair is a completely different mechanical stress than sitting cross-legged on the ground. Just as standing stationary on two legs is different than weight shifting effortlessly from one leg to the other. Similar to the idea of developing more movement variability in an exercise practice, it’s important that you’re able to adopt positions besides those you do most frequently. This may be another area where the help of a movement professional is necessary so that you can become comfortable with the mobility and stability necessary to adopt different variations of sitting and standing positions.
In conclusion, there is plenty of disagreement and misunderstanding around the topic of posture. Any respectable strength and conditioning professional would agree that proper positioning and technique is vital when undertaking various movements in a strength and conditioning program. We must understand that our bodies are constantly changing; therefore, posture should be viewed as a dynamic, ever-changing journey — not a fixed destination.
