have better posture

I continue to learn more about my body and the way I hold it.

This feels never ending. Just when I’m confident I’ve mastered keeping my sholders back, I realize that I’m still leaning forward, and so on.

I feel like I’m making progress. I’m understanding my poor posture in ways I didn’t even know I needed to understand. I identified that my mid-back is just as much an issue as my shoulders. Now I’m trying to find ways to correct.

I’m fairly sure yoga is helping.

From now on, whenever my coworker tells me that I look tired, I’m going to take it as a reminder to pay attention to my posture.

I had an ergonomic assesment at work. The guy adjusted my chair so that the seat pan is tilted forward. I did’t like it at first, and felt like I was falling out of my chair. But I agreed to keep in for a while. Its working great. It is impossible to slump forward with the seat tilted forward. This is exactly the oposite of what I had been doing – tilting the seat back to encourage myself to recline was resulting in my leaning forward to get near enough to the monitor. This website shows examples.

I’m going to adjust my chair at home to this arrangement too.

I am still crossing my legs too much.

I finally talked to my boss about getting my desk lowered. Hopefully this will help.

This is from The Natural Year by Jane Alexander.

“Ted sent me out into the street to walk around with my shoulders back and my whole chest area open. It was one of the scariest things I have ever done-I felt so unprotected… It can be very scary when your posture changes because immediately you are interacting differently with the world. You are giving out different messages, and so people treat you differently.”

Since starting my posture focused weight training program I have seen real results in my standing and walking posture. This is especially true in my sholders. I used to think that shoulders pushed back was correct, now I realize its more about rotation.

I still hunch when I’m sitting at my desk. I took and online ergonomic assesment and it proved that my desk isn’t setup correctly for me. But I don’t understand really how to fix it. I”m supposed to have my armrests even with my elbows. And my keyboard at a hight such that my forarms are parallel to the floor… Sounds great. But if thats the case, then the armrests hit the desk and keep the chair pushed way out so I can’t reach the keyboard wihtout leaning forward. I’m so confused.

My boy showed me a section in one of his weight training books about posture. (I must be pretty bad because he just offered it up out of the blue, said he read it and it reminded him of me!) The basic summary is that poor posture causes/is caused by muscle imbalances and that simply trying to stand up strait isn’t going to fix that, but weight training and stretching can. Treat the cause, not the symptom.

The book broke posture into three body areas (shoulders, pelvis, hips) and had assesments for each. I learned that my slumped shoulders are a symptom of my chest muscles being tight and stronger than my back muscles. I need to put extra time and effort into stretching my chest muscles and put much more time into training the back muscles and less time training chest muscles and that I also need to strengthen the muscles that provide exterior rotation of the arms. So, fewer pushups and more rows…

Similarly, the way I hold my pelvis is caused by my abs being stronger than my low back and an imbalance between my hamstrings and quads- although I can’t remember now which I’m supposed to focus on! I get to take a break from crunches and do something for the low back instead.

I didn’t have enough time with the book to design my whole training and stretching routine. Will do that this weekend. I’m already excited about having this knew goal in the gym. Rather than trying work every muscle group, I’ll now have a customised plan.

I suppose all this is very similar to the ways in which yoga would help with posture. Stretching and strengthening and balancing.

Today I’m wearing shoes with a slight heel and I’m finding that they make me more aware of how I’m walking.