Posture correction

[pal123]

OK, so I'm sure there are loads of different people who have asked and tbh I've read a few on different sites myself, however I wanted to see what people thought of my individual case.

I've added two photos of my posture and would like to know what people thought I should do to correct it as much as possible. Its not a major strain on life, but annoying nonetheless.

If somebody's asked the exact same thing then a link would be brilliant also.

Cheers

 

[nails]

To correct your posture you need to have a proper muscle balance assessment. The purpose of this is to identify what is weak, long, short, tight, underactive and/or overactive. You then need to perform DAILY stretches and muscle re-education exercises
You have a sway back posture with n exaggerated thoracic kyphosis and a scoliosis concave to the right at mid lumbar level.
Some general points you can work on are stretches for you thoracic spine- this will involve laying supine over a gym ball, rolled up towel or yoga block.
With your posture type you normally see tight hamstrings and weak gluts. When I say weak I mean postural muscles so you willl need to perform static holds to encourage certain muscles to be activated- With gluts this will be bridging work.

The most obvious thing about your posture is anterior musculture (pec major, minor, ant delt) are super tight, relative to long weak retractors (lower traps, rhomboids, posterior delts, infra and supra spinatus. You need to stretch your pecs and perform scapluar setting exercises, retraction exercises, rotator cuff strengthening.

Gym wise- only perform upper pec exercises- use some pre-exhust exercises to really isolate upper fibresand no flat or decline presses. Posterior delt work, lots of rowing exercises - not just exercises that involve pulling to the abdomen; include rows that pull to the upper sternum. Check out core performance.com

 

[manio]

1. regular full body stretching.

2. our chest muscles are naturally stronger then upper back muscles. You need to do a lot of rowing and pulling exercises to "pull" your shoulders back.

 

[KarenSafez]

Your smartphone can alert you when you start slouching

There's a free app called Posture Perfect for Android phones which alerts you when you start slouching. It is fully customizable and has different settings for different kinds of sitting (meditation to sitting with a lot of movement).

You press the activate button, put the phone in your pocket, and let the app notify you (via sound or vibrate) when you're slouching.

 

[Clinton]

Yes, you do need a proper postural assessment. However I think there a few distinct things you can do that I think is universal and benefits most people.

Your postural misalignment is quite common and it comes down to just 2 major distinctions.
Pelvic tilt and scapula control.

For pelvic tilt-picture your pelvis as a bowl, imagine as if it were holding liquid. Your aim is to keep the front edge and back edge level so that the liquid does not spill.
Your pelvis tilts forward as does a lot of people's. Concentrate on contracting your glutes and notice what happens.

Scapula control-this is the cause of kyphosis. When your shoulders hunch forward its because of the pecs and traps engaging more than the lats.
When mindfully correcting this part of your posture, focus on one or more of these tricks;
Chest out
Squeeze shoulder blades( as if you want to crush a can between them)
Shoulders back and down(very common technique queue in gyms)
Stretch your abs(this is my favourite, for the simple reason that sometimes when I'm tense and I find myself hunching and locking my shoulders up, I struggle to straighten it at times. Until recently, I realized that if I straighten my abs it puts the weight of my shoulders behind me and automatically all the other queues get met)

I know this might seem like an over simplification but I think for pelvic, glute and lower ab exercises and for scaps, lat exercises.

 

[James229]

Agree with nails