“Stand up straight!”, “Don’t hunch!”, “No slouching!”. This is the usual advice you’ll hear when it comes to good posture. While striving to improve your posture is a good idea, there are also a lot of myths out there that simply lead to misinformation. In this article, we’re going to debunk the 3 biggest lies about bad posture and give you some important tips that actually work.
What you will learn in this article:
First lie: Your Spine has to be straight
We’ve been told our whole lives to sit up straight, or we end up with tight muscles and a ruined spine for the rest of our lives. Well the reality is that optimal posture isn’t straight or fixed: it’s dynamic. The main problem we want to avoid is to permanently sit in the same position. Bad posture mainly exists, because we force ourselves into the same position hour by hour, day by day, year by year. That is the reason why you should change the way you sit frequently. This gives your body a short release from the current sitting position and with that relaxes your muscles.
Of course there is nothing wrong with correcting your posture & sitting straight for a while, but every fixed position can lead to tight muscles and pain if you maintain it for too long. So instead of forcing yourself to a certain position, move as often as possible. In addition we suggest a short mobility routine you can do right at your desk. This increases your body’s awareness, relaxes the tight muscles and helps you to work against imbalances. And now, let´smove one with the second of these 3 biggest lies about bad posture.
Second lie: You can achieve a good posture with gadgets and shirts
Wearing a posture clothing is like trying to fight against the symptom and not the cause of a problem. These gadgets are meant to passively correct your posture by putting your body into a certain alignment. And exactly this is the problem. In the long run, it makes your muscles weaker because they do not have to do their job. Meaning that when the posture corrector comes off, not only will you find yourself back in the same position, but you may even be in worse shape. This has to do with the lack of muscle involvement over the past couples of hours that you’ve been wearing the posture corrector.
In addition a lot of these tools don’t even correct your posture, they only try to pull your shoulders back, what they first don’t do very well. Second: Even if they pull your shoulders back you can still slouch in your spine. It’s even possible to increase the risk of injury because the ability to stabilize your spine actively gets worse. If the muscles around your spine are too weak or simply not used to support your own weight your body can react with muscle spasm. Or even worse you could harm your spinal discs due to the lack of active stabilization.
Don’t let them fool you
The people who are selling these gadjets even use our footage to promote their bad product. They didn’t ask for permisson. They just want to make quick money by putting us into the ad. Of course we would never promote these products so don’t let yourself getting screwed. Maybe sometimes it can feel good to have a passive support that helps you to maintain a certain position. It can also increase your body awareness in the short term. But there is no way around stabilization, mobility and strength training. Only in that way your body is able to support itself actively in the long term.
Third lie: Spinal Flexion and protraction is bad for your posture
The last of the 3 biggest lies about bad posture is related to spinal Flexion and protraction. The root of this argument is that exercises with these movements make your posture worse because they align the body in the same position you want to avoid in the first place . Well first of all you have to distinguish between an active and a passive movement.
It’s a huge difference if you hang passively in your structures or if you stabilize yourself actively. You can apply the same principle to all other joints and muscles. For example: It’s totally fine if your arch your lower back when you do an arch up or a cobra pose. But it’s not recommended when you do a plank a handstand or an dragon flag. Here you simply are not able to stabilize yourself properly and let gravity do its work.
The next point you have to consider is that you do those exercises only for a few seconds or minutes each workout while you force your body into a slouching posture many hours a day. Of course you should still aim for a balanced training between your anterior and posterior muscle chain. If you only bench, plank, or do crunches you’re nearly begging for imbalances or injuries.
If you’re looking for a well structured program that aims for a balanced training of your whole body and avoids imbalances right from the beginning you should head over to calimove.com. Every program is designed as a step by step online course you can follow easily. No matter if you just started working out or if you’re already an expert we offer the right one for you.
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