Pre-training: Corrective training
Author: Jonathan Wong, Singapore Personal Trainer And Performance Expert
Corrective Training
The most common posture problem I have faced has various names but they all mean pretty much the same thing.
Some people call it “upper cross” and “lower cross” syndrome, some therapists call it “kyphotic/lordotic posture”, some call it anterior pelvic tilt and excessive upper back rounding.
I just call it lousy, weak people posture. And here is what it looks like.
The majority of people have some variation of it. The causes are many. Inactivity, sitting down too much, too much computer use, too much high heels (for the ladies) and poor ergonomics and positioning in the office are just some of the causes.
But the results are terrible for performance of physical tasks.
The forward tilt (the back is higher than the front) of the pelvis (see red line) means that your abs are long and weak. See how the lower front of the hips causes the abdominals to lengthen and pop out (ugh that belly!). Long, weakened torso muscles make for poor back health. Ouch.
Your hip flexors are tight from all the sitting down all day. Hip flexors bring your knees up toward your chest. Since we are sitting with our knees pretty much up most of the day, the hip flexors are in a constant tight state.
The body responds to all stimulus. We will become good at what we do a lot of. In this case it says “oh, you like to be in this tight, knees-up position? Fine. I will make you extremely good at this position.” The end result is that the hip flexors tighten up and the opposite muscles become longer and weaker.
The opposite muscles are the glutes (buttocks). When these get weak we get a host of problems too long to mention. But one of the problems relating to the IPPT is that the buttocks are extremely powerful and strong and are key muscles for posture, running and jumping. Uh-oh. We need them but now they are weakened because of the excessive sitting.
Because of the poor pelvic alignment and poor buttock function, the lower back needs to curve more.
To keep in balance, the upper back has to round more (see blue line) as well just to keep our bodies from falling backwards. Then to compensate for that, our heads have to pop forward and up to keep our eyes looking directly ahead. In addition this overly rounder upper body position is bad for shoulder blade position and this is a problem for shoulder health as well.
All these compensations reduce the ability of our spines to absorb force safely due to the excessive curves (too little curve is also a problem but it’s less widespread). They also put us in a poor position to develop force and put our shoulders at risk due to poor positioning of our shoulder blades on the overly rounded upper back.
These posture faults also mean that we move inefficiently and we use the wrong muscles e.g. the lower back and hamstrings are over worked and the buttocks are under worked. These set us up for poor performance and injury.
Now that I have you worried. Let’s talk about how to fix it! The exercises and stretches in the next section are those I recommend. There are also short explanations on why they work.
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