Improving the strength of the postural muscles in the back helps bring the body into balance and away from poor posture and potential pain. This is very important for both sedentary and active people especially for those that follow unbalanced exercise programmes. If you spend a lot of time exercising your abs you are training the muscles that flex your body forward. Exercising the back musculature, the muscles that extend the body backwards and away from poor posture will make your posture look normal. Postural muscles become lengthened and weak due to holding poor posture in repetitive lifestyle situations and following unbalanced training programmes, which is why a change in posture normally follows.
Examples that can lead to a poor posture:
Lack of exercise
Being overweight or obese
Sedentary lifestyle
Stress
Bad work practises
Picking up objects with a round back
Driving long distances
Performing exercises using the wrong technique
These are just a few examples from many everyday activities that can put you at risk of developing a poor posture. Many sports can also cause bad postures, as many are one side dominant and repetitive.
You only have to look around to see people’s poor postures with their round backs and forward head and shoulders to appreciate how common this problem is. By paying attention and aware of postural issues and performing preventative exercises a future of pain and injury can be avoided and better aesthetics achieved.
An excellent exercise for the posture is to lie face down on the floor keeping the chin tucked.
Toes should remain on the ground.
If you have a large curve in the low back when standing tense the backside muscles together throughout the exercise.
As you bring the head and upper body off the floor simultaneously bring the shoulder blades together. Your arms should be out by your side with palms facing away from the body with thumbs pointing up towards the ceiling.
The extended position should be held for a total of 3 minutes, hold for as long as possible without losing technique. Your toes should remain touching the floor throughout the exercise.
The holding position may be broken down into less time followed by a brief rest until 3 minutes total time has been reached in the extended position. For example, 30-second hold followed by a 30 second rest and repeated 6 times or 10 seconds hold followed by 10-second rest repeated 18 times.
If your posture isn’t as good as it should be then this exercise could be done everyday preferably at the end of the day or at the end of your regular workout. The reason for this is if you have poor posture and were to perform this kind of exercise before your workout or at the beginning of the day then the postural muscles would be in an even more of a weakened state. This would make poor posture persistent and possibly worse than normal.
By performing preventative exercises a future of pain and injury can be avoided!
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