How to improve your posture instantly
One health related goal that is often desired, when joining the gym, is to improve posture.
Having great posture has powerful benefits including increased confidence, improved social status, higher testosterone levels in men and significantly reduced risk of injury.
On the contrary, having poor posture can lead to a wide variety of pathologies including, but not limited to, spinal and shoulder injury, neck and lower back pain.
In addition, it is also strongly linked to digestion problems, acid reflux, lower testosterone levels, amongst other conditions.
The standard advice, that you have probably all heard before, is that you need to strengthen your back muscles (particularly the muscles in-between your shoulder blades) and stretch your chest muscles.
This will allow your shoulder blades to sit further back.
But one thing that must be understood first is…
Posture is a choice you make
You have to actively stand and sit up straight, which requires conscious effort.
When doing this you are training your “postural” muscles to hold this position.
Overtime, as you build the habit, you should be able to do it without even thinking about it.
However, when deciding to work on your posture probably the most important muscle group to strengthen is your erector spinae.
This is the muscle that resists you slouching forwards and rounding your spine and comprises of the spinalis, longissimus and iliocostalis muscles (see picture).
A simple way of training these muscles is a seated spinal extension (see video below)
In this exercise you are trying to elevate the front of your ribs and arch your mid back.
When performing this exercise, ensure that you keep your eyes looking straight ahead and chin neutral.
If done correctly, you should feel a squeeze or tightening of the muscles in the middle of the back.
And this brings us to how you sit at your desk.
Changing this one aspect of your life can have a dramatic impact on your posture because you likely do it for hours and hours every day.
When setting up your home office, your computer screen should be centred with your eyes when you are sitting fully upright (i.e., when performing the exercise in the video above).
You don’t need to be in full spinal extension, but it should be straight.
In addition, your table and seat height should be set so that your feet are flat on the ground, your elbows are off the table and bent to 90 degrees.
If you are unsure if you have the correct set up, send me a picture of you sitting at your desk and I can provide some feedback.