The Importance of Posture

Do me a favor. Go stand with your back against the wall. Make sure your heels, butt, shoulders, and head are all touching. Now drop your chin so that your head is level, pull those shoulders back, draw your belly button in, and stand up as tall as you can. I'll bet this feels pretty uncomfortable for you. Well, this is what good posture looks and feels like. It should not really feel like this, but due to years and years of having bad posture, we've effected the natural resting position of our joints and muscles. Continue this, and as you get older you'll develop some nasty postural distortions that cannot be fixed. Ever see and old man or woman who's neck looks like it's coming out of the top of their chest or has a hump on the back of their neck? This is from having a chronic forward head posture.

With proper posture, our bodies are extremely strong. We can load our selves with tremendous weight without injury, and move with the utmost efficiency. Slowly break from this posture, and those loads on your joints grow exponentially, causing pain and injury. If we all had perfect posture, there would be no such thing as bad knees, bad backs, bad shoulders, sore necks, sore feet, etc. These conditions come from a breakdown in your bodies kinetic chain which overloads the muscles and joints. The pain you feel is your bodies way of letting you know something is wrong. Rather than taking a pill and sitting down to rest, which only treat the symptoms, let's work on attacking the problem head on. Always be aware of your posture! Practice standing against that wall as I mentioned above. Always try to stand up straight, pull the shoulders back, and suck in the gut. Think of a soldier saluting a general, and you'll get the idea. It may seem silly and awkward at first, but those feeling will go away with time and practice.