Some key posture posers
Iam pretty sure you have never sat, slouched or lay down more in the past two months than in your entire working career. Lockdown has hit many people hard and to add to the aches and pains, now throw in some back pain, neck pain and allround body stiffness.
Most offices have a decent set up, not perfect but enough to feel comfortable during work hours. But few people have invested the capital needed for a good ergonomic chair, desk and lumbar spine support braces or pillows.
Common places where people work on their laptops at home are on the couch, at the dining room table, in bed or on their patio. All these areas have contributed to your poor posture and aches and pains.
If you are a sportsman, this could have significant shortterm implications on your risks of injury and performance output. A simple item like a chair that we take for granted can make a massive difference in hip flexor tightness. The hip flexor is responsible for explosive speed and if this is right, your range of motion is smaller if you are a beast of an athlete. The last thing you want is a monster truck engine force thrusting forward with a small range of motion. This is when injuries occur.
Posture is critically important because it helps keep bones and joints in the correct alignment so that muscles can function properly. Incorrect alignment can lead towards abnormal wear and tear on joints and energy loss. If you are a midfielder and need to run vast distances on a football pitch, then energy efficiency is critical for your role.
Gravity saves us from floating into space, the downward forces of gravity pulling us towards the earth also affect us in a negative way if our posture is not upright. If you have a poor slouching forward posture, gravity plays its part in your back, glute and surrounding muscles having to work twice as hard to prevent your shoulders, and you yourself from falling to the ground. That is why at the end of a day’s work, your back is killing you. The simple reason being that your muscles have simply been working overtime to keep you up.
What should good posture look like? If you look at your body from the front, all 33 vertebrae should appear in alignment straight down. From the side you should have three curves, one at your neck, one at your shoulder and one at the base of your lower back. If you have great posture, you should be able to draw a line from your shoulder to your hip to a few centimetres in front of your ankle.
Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist Murat Dalkilinc says this allows you to have a better centre of gravity and keeps you moving efficiently with the least amount of fatigue and muscle strain.