Posture
Do you think you have perfect posture?
Are you ears perfectly in line with your shoulders when you stand up straight?
If not, let’s start to make some changes.
How many times did your parents tell you to sit up or stand up straight? As annoying as it may have seemed, they were smart to try to fix our posture when we were young! If your posture isn’t near perfect, you’re in the right place to start chipping away and improving it.
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Many jobs require us to sit all day. 8 hours per day in a chair will more than likely cause us to start breaking down our posture in classic ways because our muscles get tired, leading to back and/or neck pain. How does this even happen? First, you round your low back to sit back in the chair - then your shoulders round forward because they get tired from being held back - then your chin juts forward to get closer to whatever you’re looking at. If we do this most of the day, our muscles will eventually get used to it, and it will translate into our posture while we’re standing and walking.
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For some, sitting is inevitable and we cannot escape being in a chair for hours on end due to occupational duties. So the key is to build up our ‘sitting endurance.’ So how do we do that? The challenge is the sit on the edge of your chair with proper posture for as long as possible. When this gets tiring, instead of rounding your low back, get up and take a walk around the office. Another thing that can help is finding a lumbar, or low back, support. This can be something as fancy as a ‘lumbar roll’ or as simple as a rolled up towel or sweatshirt that is placed in the small of our low backs. This will act as a cue for us so we are less likely to round the low back when sitting.
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Another option (depending on the job) would be to request a standing desk at work or purchase one for yourself at home. Just because you get a standing desk doesn’t mean you have to stand ALL day - but starting with 30 minutes standing followed by 45 minutes of sitting (with good posture) on and off all day will start to build up that endurance and strengthen the postural muscles of the spine. Eventually, you will find that you’re able to stand longer, and when you are sitting you should be able to better keep that perfect posture we’re all working towards!
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Today’s society has given us yet another new reason to have poor posture: text-neck. Everyone is looking down all day on their phone/tablet/kindle/laptop/etc., and it is having the same effect on us as sitting all day every day! Technology isn’t going away, so what can we do? Start with bringing whatever you’re looking down at up to at least 45° to decrease the load on our necks. Did you know that for every inch your head shifts forward past your shoulders, 10 pounds of pressure is applied to your spine due to gravity? Let’s not carry any excess weight on our shoulders than we already do!
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Our posture is extremely important, it's as simple as that. Become conscious of it, and work to improve it each and every day!
