Posture Perfect! Part One: Upper Body
By Joy DuMay, Certified Personal Fitness and Pilates Trainer
What is your body attitude – tall and alert or slumped and focused downward? What figure do you show others – striding towards success or stooping to disappointment? How you present yourself tells others quite a bit about what is going on inside your head – and also what type of activity (or lack of it) that we do on a regular business.
The average human head weighs nine pounds: quite a load to carry around, and one of the reasons so many of us live with a round-shouldered, hunched-over posture. Everyday activities, like sitting at a computer, carrying kids or groceries, working in the kitchen, and even driving a car can draw our shoulders forward and down. All of these repetitive drooping postures can lead to a condition called kyphosis.
Chronic kyphosis means that your nine pound noggin isn’t sitting comfortably atop your shoulders. Instead, it’s cocked at an awkward angle, causing extra strain on back and neck muscles, which must work overtime to keep it upright. Your chest muscles are overworked and tight, and your back muscles are weak. Your whole upper body posture spells contraction and pain.
How we feel about ourselves and our world also affects how we sit and stand. A depressed person tends to look at the floor and curl their shoulders inwards. A happy person tends to look up and be alert to the world around them. As we get older, balance issues can cause us to look down at the ground for stability. Add this movement pattern to the fact that most people do not stretch, and now we are looking at neck tension and a reduced range of motion in our advanced years.
Ideal posture comes from awareness, control of your environment, and then some simple stretching and strength exercises. Here are some specific ways to start you on your way to perfect posture.
1) Awareness: Checking your posture several times a day is probably the number one thing you can do to improve it. Think of standing or sitting tall, with your chest up and shoulders back. Imagine that you have pockets where your shoulder blades are, and try to draw those shoulder blades back and down and “put them in their pockets”. Lengthen your neck and keep your chin level. Imagine that you are suspended from the top of your head, elongating your spine and relaxing your shoulders.
2) Environment: Make sure that the equipment you use helps you keep good posture: set your computer and chair at the right height for sitting up tall. If your computer screen is too low, you will be slumping all day and aching all night. Change the rearview mirror in your car so that you can only see behind you if you are sitting up tall. If you read in bed, make sure that you have plenty of head and back support to keep your spine lengthened and your head upright.
3) Exercise: Many people tend to spend more time in the gym exercising the muscles in the front of their bodies, the ones they see in the mirror, and ignore the muscles in the back, exacerbating the problem. Pushing motions like a Chest Press tighten the pectoral muscles and draw the shoulders even farther forward. It is important to counteract these forward motions with pulling exercises like Rowing, to strengthen the upper and mid back muscles and lengthen the chest and shoulder muscles.
The upper body Chicken Wing is an easy exercise that you can do daily. Sit up tall and place your hands behind your head with fingers interlaced. Bring your elbows together in front of your face. Now, keeping your chest lifted and shoulders down and relaxed, pull your elbows straight back. You should feel a stretch in the front of your shoulders and a contraction in the upper back muscles. Do this move ten times at a slow and controlled pace. This exercise can also be done lying on your back on the floor or a bed.