Maintaining good posture is hugely important to your overall health and offers a variety of benefits, including reduced back pain, improved breathing, and increased energy.
Correct posture can help avoid muscular tension, pain, fatigue, and other common illnesses and medical conditions. To maintain good posture, we must first ensure that we are equipped with the correct knowledge to educate and build our muscles.
Mobilise muscles
Exposing muscles to a fully lengthened state will give them mobility and flexibility. Lengthening your muscles will start to reverse the effects of any negative daily postural positions or habits, whether through your job or awkward positions that you find yourself in, causing tension build-up.
Mobilising your muscles will, in turn, reduce the build-up of tension and stiffness, improve blood flow and give your muscles the best chance at staying flexible.
Activate muscles to avoid injury
We need to build a strong connection with all the muscles in our body to ensure good posture. A firm connection guarantees that each muscle can do its job, resulting in less compensation by surrounding muscles, causing tension build-up and potential injury.
Activating a muscle is about building the connection between your brain and the desired area. You can perform what is known as “activation” exercises which are low-fatiguing, allowing increased awareness and control over a particular muscle. Activation exercises will help maintain posture when the muscles that keep you upright are activated. These muscles will be firing up and doing their job to maintain good posture.
Strengthen muscles to build strong posture
We must ensure that our muscles are strong enough to withstand the overall load and stress we are putting them under daily.
Strengthening a muscle can be done by exposing it to resistance and repeating the process to allow your body to adapt to the stress and load. The key to building strength is consistency!
Strength training is a vital part of any training routine, whether you are building muscle, stripping fat, or simply looking to improve your overall body strength. Strength training can benefit posture and ensure you stay injury-free.
If you are looking for more information on improving your posture, book an appointment with our treatment team and get your good posture journey on track.