I always think of the guards at Buckingham palace in the UK when I think of perfect posture. They stand in one place without moving for hours, how crazy is that. Try sitting in one position without moving for 10 minutes. These guys do it day by day rain or shine. Imaging the self-discipline and muscle stamina it takes to continue to hold this posture.

 

In part II it is all about having the strength and stability to sustain our good posture. This stability will allow us to maintain our good posture when we are in an optimal position. Having the best mobility in the world is great but if you are only able to hold that perfect position for 5 minutes during a 8 hour work day, you will still have poor posture. The main postural stabilizers are the upper back muscles, deep neck flexors, front core muscles like the rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus and obliques, and glute muscles.

 

Crossover Symmetry Row–

The goal with any of the Crossover Symmetry exercises is to keep your shoulder blades down, focusing on pinching the bottom points of the shoulder blades together.

 

Crossover Symmetry Reverse Fly–

This exercises is just like the one above just with a longer lever arm with the arms being strait, make sure to keep your shoulder blades down, focusing on pinching the bottom points of the shoulder blades together.

Deep Neck Flexor Activation–

Our deep neck flexors get lengthened as our posture gets worse, these little muscles in the front of the neck allow us to tuck our chin and keep our head stacked over our torso.

 

Hollow Rock Prep–

This progression can be tailored to any level. The important part of this is to breath while you are using your core muscles to flatten your back.

 

Bridge-

Our hip muscles support the pelvis which is the foundation for our posture, the bridge is a great way to get glut max active and stronger.

Band Side steps-

Our world is often lived in the sagittal plane (forwards and backwards), this exercises adds strength and stability in the frontal plane (side to side). This will help prevent rotational and side shifting with poor posture.

 

The last variable is your work set up. This is where most people start and can’t seem to figure out why they still have poor posture. Set up is a component to optimize posture but just having a great desk set up, standing desk, or any other sweet new gimmick is out this month will not allow you to be in or sustain that position for a full work day without proper mobility and stability.

 

The number of postural exercises are infinite. Figure out what your biggest limitation is and work on it, then find a new limitation, we should never strive to settle for less pain if we can fix the problem. Get a list of 3-4 exercises that help you the most and keep adding exercises and taking them away as you improve your posture.

Call us today if you think you could benefit from improving your posture and get a postural assessment. 808-599-0177