Good posture is a combination of a balanced position (front/back and right/left) with a neutral spine. The challenge is finding and maintaining this position.
How to Find and Maintain Good Posture
There are two helpful questions to consider.
- How are you engaging?
- How can you build proper strength to support good posture?
First, let’s consider engagement. If you stand in an even position from every direction, but you hold your breath and hold tension in your chest, you will be engaging many muscles through the upper body and likely your glutes and spinal muscles. Let’s contrast this with standing in an even and balanced position with a relaxed upper body and glutes. While the position is the same, the engagement is wildly different.
While this example assumes being even, another consideration is the impact of injury. If you have a long history of injury or pain, you also likely have small imbalances in how you engage. Some of these can be seen with the naked eye, but some need to be felt in order to change them.
The second principle to consider is that posture requires strength. More specifically, maintaining good posture requires strength in stabilizers, which are meant to maintain low-level engagement for a long period of time. However, if you have not been using them, these muscles will not be strong, and as such, they take time to strengthen.
For example, if you stood on one foot for 6 months, the leg you did not stand on would lose strength; in fact, it would likely be so much that the leg would look visually smaller. As a result, muscles in the hips, low back, pelvis, abdomen, and spine would also be impacted, with certain muscles ending up tighter, stronger, weaker, or irritated. When you went back to walking on both feet, you would lack the strength to support yourself through that leg and hip, while also lacking even strength for support through your pelvis, hips, and spine.
How to Position Your Hips in Good Posture
In Part 1, we discussed feet positioning, which is the first step in the process of improving posture, and is necessary to adjust prior to moving up to your hips.
However, once you have a good feel for a neutral stance through your feet, it is time to shift your focus to your hips. When I say hips, what I really mean is the pelvis.
As seen below, the pelvis is a bowl shape. Each side of the pelvis can rotate, the tailbone can shift right and left, and the entire pelvis can tilt in all directions (think about a hula dancer!).
The amount of movement available in the pelvis and hips is important for movement. However, the more movement available, the more stability and strength are required to maintain good positioning, AND the more options for uneven positions.
For example, options for uneven positioning in the hips and pelvis include:
- A tilt forward or backwards, which would look like a larger-than-normal arch in the low back, or tucking the hips under
- One side tilted one direction, tucked under, for example, while the other is tilted the other direction
- One hip is higher than the other
How to Find Good Posture in Your Hips
If this feels overwhelming, you’re not alone! While it is often helpful to understand the concepts behind posture, I find the most effective tool is how to find the feeling of being even and supported.
Try this exercise:
- Start by standing in the neutral stance with your feet
- Shift your weight right to left and front to back until you find a balance with your weight being even right to left AND front and back. The weight in your feet will ideally be just in front of the ankles
- Take a few breaths, soften your shoulders, and shift your focus to your pelvis, hips, and lower back.
- Shift your hips right, left, forward, and back until you feel your tailbone over your heels with a small arch in the lower back
- Feel into your feet, adjust until you can feel your weight on three points of each foot: behind the big toe, behind the little toe, and the heel
- Feel your weight pressed into your feet and allow yourself to play with your weight balance in your feet while maintaining your tailbone over your heels.
The goal of this exercise is to play with this position. You should feel a small amount of effort, meaning that you should not be holding with all of your might to find and maintain this position. Instead, focus on breathing and softening.
Helping You Find a More Balanced Posture with Hypermobility
Posture is balance. Like a stack of blocks, if you find the right balance, you can stand on your feet, stacking your hips above your feet so that the large muscles in the hips and lower back are not working at 100% effort to hold you up.
However, this takes practice. Once you have a good foundation of where to put your feet, spend some time PRACTICING how to position your hips. Good places to practice include:
- While brushing your teeth
- In line at the grocery store
- While washing dishes
If you are ready to build sustainable strength & improve your posture, I can help. I offer online coaching and strength programming that can help you reduce pain and build foundational strength with hypermobility, chronic pain, and chronic injuries. Schedule a free consultation HERE today to learn more.