Here is our basic (yet hopefully helpful) take on posture, how it's made, and what happens when you have suboptimal posture. Everyone's posture is unique, yet falls into some pretty common categories. However, we'll save the deeper dive into posture for another blog. To put it simply, your posture is caused by your soft tissue and its relationship with its surrounding structures. Example, if your pectorals and anterior delts (chest muscles) are too shortened (tight) and your mid traps and rhomboids (mid/upper back muscles) are too lengthened (weak), you will probably have forward head and shoulder posture.
This can come about for a number of reasons; most notably would be sitting at a desk or couch and staring at screen for prolonged periods of time, on a regular basis. If you do this long enough, your body will adopt a new "normal" posture. One that will throw you into the cumulative injury cycle: Tissue trauma, inflammation, muscle spasms, adhesions, altered neuromuscular control, muscle imbalances and then new trauma. Ergo the cycle begins again.
However, a body in proper posture will not easily succumb to the stresses and strains of the day, and be more resilient should the body be challenged in a more dynamic way; such as a trip and subsequent fall.
Ideally, in static standing posture there would be a straight line running from your ear through the shoulder, hip socket, knee joint to just in front of your ankle bone. This posture should be the norm, and should be demonstrated without forcing that position. But seldom is this the case.
Because...
The average person partakes in roughly
10 - 14 hours of anti-posture work daily. How many hours a day do you actively partake in correcting and strengthening your posture? - Brie
