Most adults can still hear those words echoing in our heads decades later. These words are often spoken by a parent or teacher who was truly ahead of their time. We were just too young to realize it.
A large number of musculoskeletal disorders that I see on a daily basis have poor posture as their root cause. Most shoulder, neck, and arm problems can be traced to poor posture. The physical effects of having your head in a forward bent position and the rounding of the shoulders typically impairs blood flow down the arms and can set you up for problems like tendonitis at the elbow or even carpal tunnel syndrome! In fact, I have successfully treated carpal tunnel problems just by having a patient correct their posture.
The problem when you are young is that your body never tells you that poor posture is wrong. Earlier in life, poor posture doesn’t often result in pain or any symptom that would make you take notice of the problem and then take action to correct it. By the time you are getting an ache or pain from bad posture, that habit is pretty much part of you. You regularly “practice” poor posture by sitting at a desk, using a computer, driving, sitting on a sofa or in a recliner. That could take up most of your day! It is almost like your body is getting “casted” into poor posture with the sheer amount of time you spend in that position.
It may sound pretty simplistic to just “stand up straight”. And it is! Even if I followed you around all day shouting that at you, it would not work. Gravity always wins, and eventually, the head and shoulders fall forward again.
So what can we do about it?
It makes much more sense to regularly practice reversing the poor posture daily by stretching all the muscles and soft tissues that have adaptively tightened from the bad positions. Most of these muscles are in the front of the body in the chest and shoulder area. If I could get each of you to do just 5 minutes of posture reversal stretching every day, I guarantee you would feel better!
This is all you have to do: Check out our video here:
- 1. Take a 3 foot long roll of foam.
- 2. Just lie on the roll lengthwise so the roll supports you from your head to your tailbone. The roll should be about 5 to 6 inches thick and should be dense but not rock hard. If you have a hard roll, put a towel over it to make it more comfortable.
- 3. While on the roll, let your arms stretch out to the sides in order to stretch your chest and shoulders.
- 4. Do this for about 5 minutes. You are now stretching all the things that have gotten tight from years of poor posture.
Doing this for just 5 minutes a day really works. Hundreds of my patients tell me it is the best single stretch they have ever done. Get your kids to start doing it as well, and hopefully, you will not have to yell at them to “stand up straight”!
You might also consider my list of quick and easy posture tricks, guaranteed to make you look 10 years younger by this weekend!
