Stand Up Straight
“Stand up straight!”, “Pull your shoulders back”, “Stop slouching, it looks horrible.”
If your grandmother or mother are worth their salt, you will be very familiar with these types of statements. Although they had noble intentions, is this the right way to correct posture?
Your grandmother has always known that having an upright posture is important to not only looking good but also feeling good.
As you are reading this, you are probably sitting in a car right now.Unless you are sitting on a specific ABC seat wedge you will more than likely find your shoulders and head coming forward, especially if you take a deep breath in, relax and let your body slump. If your shoulders are sitting forward or you are in a slouched position, consider grandma asking you now to sit up straight, how would you do it? You would pull your shoulders back using your rhomboids and trapezius muscles (muscles behind the shoulders) and straighten your spine using more muscles in your back, maybe even brace your core.
This pulls your body into a more upright position and it also gets grandma off your case but how long can you actually hold this position? If you do not have great muscular condition from regularly engaging in strength and conditioning exercises, it is likely that you can only hold your body in an upright position for a short period of time, maybe a couple of minutes. Then as these muscles begin to fatigue you will find yourself slouching again. Many office workers are familiar with this situation; they will try to hold themselves in good upright position but all to often fail because of muscular fatigue. Or you can continue to force these muscles to hold you upright, placing great strain on the muscles, which causes pain. This is a big reason why most people who sit down all day get lots of neck pain, lower back pain and shoulder pain.
Sure you could train these muscles to hold you in a better posture for longer but is that a real solution to the posture problem?
Enter bone stacking. The reason that you find yourself slouching or falling forward is because of poor skeletal alignment. Imagine your spine is like a big stack of blocks. When they are balanced and well stacked, the block tower will hold itself upright against gravity easily and you will have upright EFFORTLESS posture. However, if these blocks are not well balanced then you will find your body falling forward or off balance.
If your spine is not well balanced you will find your posture going forward, having a sway back or slouching. Training your muscles to hold this poorly stacked system is only going to temporarily fix the problem and at best will only compensate for this issue.
The real solution that grandma was looking for was Advanced BioStructural Correction (ABC). ABC focuses on correcting the alignment of the bones in your body, so they are able to stack or balance correctly. When this happens you will find you no longer need to train your muscles to hold you upright all day, your bones will do that for you. ABC helps correct the underlying structural problem of poor posture which results in far less muscular pain and tension from trying to hold yourself upright all day.
Book your appointment with our Chiropractors at Posture HQ Noosa Today.