What is good posture vs bad posture?

Your skeleton is to your body, as a foundation is to a house.  Exercising for appearance alone without considering posture is like decorating a house that has fundamental foundation flows.  Your house may be decorated with all the latest fabrics and designs but eventually the house is going to fall down.  Correcting the various muscular imbalances in a body to help correct posture is of greater value than just toning muscles for the sake of appearance alone.  To correct faulty posture shortened muscles but be stretched and long and weak muscles must be shortened and strengthened hopefully resulting a better and good posture.

Poor posture can have surprisingly adverse effects on our lives.  Everyone can benefit from better posture.  The average office worker who spends the majority of their day in front of a computer may develop upper cross syndrome, (head and neck protrude forwards), they may also experience pain in the low back, hip, shoulders, knee and ankle as well as many other discomforts including breathing and low energy.

For those that do display upper cross syndrome, their head and neck seem to be ahead of their body, shoulders are rounded and the shoulder blades are “winging”.  Clients with upper cross syndrome may complain of headaches, neck pain, rotator cuff problems and pain in the mid back region.

People with poor posture

1. Experience greater stress on their joints and muscles surrounding their joints
2. Are more susceptible to injury.
3. May suffer ailments such as low back pain, chronic neck tension/pain, headaches, rotator cuff problems, pain in the mid to upper spine, knee or hamstring strain.
4. More often than not poor postureis the reason why, regardless how of many visits to the chiropractor or osteopath you make a joint seems to keep coming out of alignment causing pain.

People with good posture

1. Have better alignment which translates into less injury
2. Better balance, agility and overall physical performance
3. Quicker recovery from exercise or physical exertion
4. Feel more energetic.

“It sounds like there are different kinds of posture. So tell me, what kinds of posture are there?”

Good question.  Posture is as varied as people but there are four main posture types, aside from “good posture”.  Most people are some combination of these four types and “good” posture.  I future posts we’ll talk more about each of the below postures.