Your posture and movement patterns are intimately related. If you have good posture your body will tend to have good (healthy, pain free, sustainable) movement patterns.
Good posture and healthy movement patterns largely determine whether or not you will experience joint problems, back/joint pain and/or muscle strain/tension.
Exercises that work to correct your personal body alignment (posture & movement patterns) can get you out of pain fast and restore lost functionality, enabling you to live a pain free, active lifestyle and improve your overall athleticism.
This post will:
- detail the importance of ideal posture / body alignment.
- show you what ideal posture looks like.
- teach you how to improve your posture & movement patterns via corrective exercise.
- link you to highly effective, free pain relief videos you can use to get yourself out of pain fast.
Ideal Posture
Let me first clarify that by "ideal posture" I do not mean remembering to stand up straight. Ideal posture has nothing to do with "trying" to stand up straight, or thinking of a string holding your head up, or sucking in your stomach or tucking your tailbone or bending your knees or pulling your shoulders back. All of those actions can actually mess up your posture and movement patterns (biomechanics).
Ideal posture and ideal movement patterns happen subconsciously and are a product of the exercise stimulus & coordinations you teach your body. You may not be aware that all the activities (and passive positions) you put your body in are constantly educating your body, but they are.
While in some cases, e.g. congential scoliosis, is genetic, most postural imbalances (e.g. hyper extension of the knees, slumping shoulders, etc.) are learned behaviors. Often we mimic our parents postures just like we mimic their speech patterns, but this does not genetically destine you to have bad posture and resultant pain therefrom. Just as you may have learned bad / painful posture from parents or friends, you can teach yourself new, pain free patterns as well.
Once you become aware that the activities and positions you put your body in have the power to influence your posture and movement patterns, you can then use specific, corrective exercises to correct imbalances, often resulting in immediate pain relief and improved functionality.
Ideal posture and ideal movement patterns happen subconsciously and are a product of the exercise stimulus & coordinations you teach your body. You may not be aware that all the activities (and passive positions) you put your body in are constantly educating your body, but they are.
While in some cases, e.g. congential scoliosis, is genetic, most postural imbalances (e.g. hyper extension of the knees, slumping shoulders, etc.) are learned behaviors. Often we mimic our parents postures just like we mimic their speech patterns, but this does not genetically destine you to have bad posture and resultant pain therefrom. Just as you may have learned bad / painful posture from parents or friends, you can teach yourself new, pain free patterns as well.
Once you become aware that the activities and positions you put your body in have the power to influence your posture and movement patterns, you can then use specific, corrective exercises to correct imbalances, often resulting in immediate pain relief and improved functionality.
Ideal Posture Looks Like This
Grill it into your nervous system!
I said it earlier in this post and I'll say it again: ideal posture is not a product of you remembering to try to stand up straight. It has to be a subconscious coordination that you teach your body using corrective exercises.
So you might be wondering now: What are corrective exercises?
Which exercises are corrective for you completely depends on your personal postural imbalances. Once you know what is out of balance in your posture then you can start to use exercises to correct your personal imbalances. This is not an obvious undertaking because it requires you to learn how to assess your posture AND - the much harder part - how to know which exercises in which order will produce the desired result of correcting your posture and getting you out of pain / improving your functionality.
On your own, this can be a very difficult task and I don't advise you try to do it without help, or at least without a little further education.
A great place to start, if you're in pain, is with the free pain relief videos I have posted to this site. Go to whichever one is titled as pain relief for whatever area (e.g. back, shoulder, knee, etc.) and try it out. If it doesn't work for you, please please please do not get discouraged. I made those videos to address the most common causes of pain in those particular areas, but as with diet/nutrition, every body is different and may be experiencing pain due to different postural imbalances. If those videos don't work for you, you may need some one on one attention and I am available for online posture therapy sessions via Skype.
If you're not in pain but simply want to improve your posture and movement patterns to get more flexible, balanced, more athletic, etc. then I recommend you start with this Overall Alignment Routine I have created to improve general alignment.
So you might be wondering now: What are corrective exercises?
Which exercises are corrective for you completely depends on your personal postural imbalances. Once you know what is out of balance in your posture then you can start to use exercises to correct your personal imbalances. This is not an obvious undertaking because it requires you to learn how to assess your posture AND - the much harder part - how to know which exercises in which order will produce the desired result of correcting your posture and getting you out of pain / improving your functionality.
On your own, this can be a very difficult task and I don't advise you try to do it without help, or at least without a little further education.
A great place to start, if you're in pain, is with the free pain relief videos I have posted to this site. Go to whichever one is titled as pain relief for whatever area (e.g. back, shoulder, knee, etc.) and try it out. If it doesn't work for you, please please please do not get discouraged. I made those videos to address the most common causes of pain in those particular areas, but as with diet/nutrition, every body is different and may be experiencing pain due to different postural imbalances. If those videos don't work for you, you may need some one on one attention and I am available for online posture therapy sessions via Skype.
If you're not in pain but simply want to improve your posture and movement patterns to get more flexible, balanced, more athletic, etc. then I recommend you start with this Overall Alignment Routine I have created to improve general alignment.
