Five Simple Steps to Improve Posture

What is posture?

Posture is the position you hold your body in while standing, sitting and moving. Furthermore, it is keeping your body weight balanced through your midline. Your weight is balanced through your midline by a neutral spine, it does this by aligning your muscles, joints, and bones.

Your spine has three natural curves at your neck, mid back, and low back, these natural curves define a neutral spine. Correct posture should maintain these curves through their natural alignment. Your head should be above your shoulders, and the top of your shoulder should be over the hips. 

Posture can be caused by many things – including using your phone or device.

There are two types of posture:

Dynamic Posture: 

This is the position of your body while in movement, whether walking, running or exercising. Muscles need to hold a proper position while in motion. Dynamic posture helps ensure safety during movement, and that posture ensures that exercises are being performed properly. Our physios can assist you in learning how to move with proper posture for everyday movements and for sports and exercise.

Static Posture: 

This is the position of your body while sitting, standing and sleeping. When your body is holding a fixed position, your muscles have to work together to stay in position. City physio will perform an assessment of this to determine how they can fix it.

Why is it important to improve posture?

Although proper posture can be important for looking your best, it is more than just standing up straight. Poor posture can affect your overall health. Slouching can:

• Increase pressure on the spine, making it more prone to injury and degeneration
• Cause back pain, neck pain, and shoulder pain
• Reduce flexibility
• Affect the movement of joints
• Alter balance and increase chance of falling
• Increase difficulty of digestion
• Increase difficulty of breathing
• Lead to low back pain

Common types of poor posture

Rolled and rounded shoulders

Otherwise known as kyphotic posture, this is where the shoulders are forward and in front of the spine. It is caused by weak back muscles compared to chest, shoulders and bicep muscles, or tightness in the chest, shoulders and biceps.

Anterior pelvic tilt 

Otherwise known as lordotic posture, where your hips are tilted to the front increasing the curve of the lumbar spine. This puts extra strain on the low back and can cause pain. It may be caused by tight hip flexors from long periods of sitting, weak core muscles and underactive or weak glutes.

Forward head posture

Where the position of the head is pushing forward in front of the spine, it is a common cause of neck pain. It is usually caused by our long periods of using our phones and other devices. Its effect is weakness and inactivity in the cervical extensors.

5 Steps to Improve Posture

While poor posture is common to a lot of people, it can adversely affect your appearance, self-esteem, health, and wellbeing. Here are 5 steps to improve posture:

1. Posture as a habit

To move everyday, our bodies use previously learnt motor patterns.  As such, it is easy to develop a habit of poor posture if you’re not thinking about it. Your body could learn bad motor patterns from slumping in your chair, leaning over to look at your phone or carrying a heavy backpack. 

The more you train it, the more you improve posture. Refer to our postural cues below for tips on how to maintain good posture. 

2. Muscle Imbalances and muscle tightness 

Rolled and rounded shoulders can be helped by stretching the chest, shoulders and biceps to open up the posture.

Increasing the strength of the spinal erectors, lats and rear deltoids may help to pull the shoulders back.

Increasing the strength of your gluteus and abdominal muscles help as well as stretching your hip flexors will pull your hips into a proper position with your spine. 

Forward head posture can be helped by increasing the strength and endurance of the cervical extensors. An exercise to check for weakness in these muscles is the cervical extensor endurance test. Lay down and lift your head a few centimetres above the ground while keeping your chin slightly tucked, then hold this position. Try to increase the duration that you can hold this exercise each time you perform it.

3. Mindfulness

Mindfulness is important to improve posture. Being aware of when you are exhibiting poor posture means you can fix it. Often people fall into the trap of spending long durations concentrating on something other than their body position. 

Remember throughout the day to check if you are in a poor position; be mindful of posture during everyday activities, like sitting, watching television, or walking. 

How is your workstation organised? Is your computer at a proper height in relation to your eye level?  Is your chair helping you maintain a proper posture?  City Physio can help perform a workstation review as part of our occupational physiotherapy expertise.

4. Postural cues

Keep your back straight – a tip to ensure this is to push the shoulders back and then down. We can help with this as sometimes thoracic mobility can be hindered, so your upper back is in a rounded position and it can be hard to straighten.

Keep your head up, chin in and looking straight ahead- a tip for this is to imagine a string pulling you up from the top of your head.

Keep your stomach in – engage your abdominal muscles to stabilise the core, and keep your lumbar spine from rounding and your hips from tilting forwards.

When sitting make sure your feet are planted, your legs aren’t crossed, and your legs are bent 90 degrees, this will ensure proper orientation of the spine and reduce unilateral imbalance. People often fall into bad habits when staying in one position for a long time, therefore it is important to engage your core and abdominal muscles when sitting and standing. Click here to read about the importance of maintaining core strength.

5. Avoid static postures

Sitting for long periods of time often results in muscular fatigue, which in turn causes long periods of poor posture. People can fall into the trap of getting lost in work or recreation. It also can tighten muscles that can cause poor posture, as such make sure to get up and move around every 30 minutes. A tip for this which can help with hydration as well, is to drink a lot of water, this will ensure you get up frequently. 

City Physio is dedicated to finding the root cause of pain, oftentimes this is due to poor posture. As such, our experienced physiotherapists can perform a postural assessment as well as design a program of exercises and stretches tailored and targeted to correct your postural imbalances. Use the book online button below.

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