Thread: why posture deteriorates and how to fix it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

It's much more complicated than you might think.

A new interesting thread has appeared on Twitter. It explains where posture problems come from, what it affects, and why you can't just pick up and straighten up.

This thread about anatomy and visual understanding, about ergonomics will be separate.

I'm talking about adults without injuries, without diagnoses, about the most common posture variations, their causes and consequences in a rather simplified form.

Then why do we need curvatures at all?

2) For freedom of movement. Whoever wore a cervical corset or unsuccessfully stretched the muscles of the neck could feel the opposite: how inconvenient it is to turn with the whole body at the same time. Curvatures allow you to turn, bend, twist, stretch, and more, while maintaining balance.

3) For ergonomics. A straight stick is not the best mechanism in gravity. Curvatures provide springiness, protecting the contents of the vertebrae and the outgoing nerves. And the vertebrae of different departments themselves have different shapes, angles and processes, coming up to each other like a puzzle.

An important detail: what does it mean the child is FORMING bends? These are bones and a man has already been born!

It's time to hang muscles on the bones of the skeleton! Yes, with the right effort and the NUMBER of REPEATS, the body adapts: the muscles contract, move the bones and shape the posture (= position in space).

Key point: the number of repetitions can arise not only from conscious active muscle contraction, but also from positional contraction, i.e. such an arrangement in space, when a certain muscle group can be shorter than their neutral state.

Those. the body can be so located in space that a certain muscle group can be shorter than their antagonists (those that pull in the opposite direction). And this does not mean that these contracted muscles are active and working.

Unfortunately, constant sitting for many hours in a row throughout childhood, adolescence and adulthood leads to the fact that groups of the most powerful muscles in the body become inactive: the gluteal muscles, core, back, deep muscles in the pelvic-core-legs area.

The connective tissue also adapts, incl. fascia, and ultimately bones. The way we spend most of our time becomes our new neutrality, norm, default position and posture. This is what the brain thinks.

Therefore, the position "Straighten up!" seems unnatural and doesn't last long.

In an effort to maintain the balance of the skeleton, some muscles are constantly contracted, while others are stretched, none of them in a neutral optimal position. Plus, some are chronically weakened, so others work for themselves and that guy.

For example, the small muscles of the neck often work behind the huge back and buttocks. And you think, where does the tension and tightness in the shoulders come from, and in the evening your eyes and head hurt? (One of the options for the development of events.)

The most common variant: the pelvis is tilted forward, the core is inactive, the lower back is chronically terrified, the head is pushed forward from constant enthusiasm looking at the screens.

Muscle pain and tension is only one aspect. Posture affects breathing, stress and fatigue, range of motion, mood, etc.

A trick question: if you come to the simulator with such a set and start swinging, what will happen? Let me remind you that the brain thinks that since we are standing upright, it’s already good. And since January, you just need to pump up and attach, for example, a 30-kilogram barbell to the same lower back. Or start running, wow!

So, Zoya, you are saying that the muscles are weakened and from this all the troubles. So how do you swing them if you can't just barbell?

It is a long and difficult road to analyze and fix the situation on your own. It often takes a person to look from the outside. But who it will be - a complete random: trainer (s) in the gym, physiotherapist (s), masseur (s), etc.

Find a person who will look at you and show you how to find your neutral, your vertical axis, both in static and in EXERCISE. A person who fumbles in anatomy and biomechanics can explain or give you a feel for how to establish a connection between the body and the brain.

And just in case: I'm not a doctor, but I studied and continue to learn from physiotherapists, massage therapists, doctors, kinesiologists, yogis and other movement specialists, and now I teach yoga, developed for the modern person, taking into account the modern lifestyle.