Changing your posture

A question I get absolutely all the time is, “Why is my posture so bad?”

The answer? It’s the little things you’re doing over a period of years.

It’s hard to influence your posture with exercises. Most of the time it’s due to things you are doing outside of the gym.Imagine a person that sits all day. Their hips are constantly in flexion, their upper back and shoulders are slouched over, they get up every two hours to go to the vending machine. Even if you gave this person the absolute perfect exercises they may not change their posture much.Why?It’s because what we do everyday for hours and hours. A half-hour workout just isn’t going to change your posture.

Think about it – do you really expect 1 ½ hours in the gym every week to counteract the fact that you sit at a desk or in your car for 40, 50 or even 60 hours every week?It’s not going to happen. Those constant postures manifest and develop into something much bigger than you give them credit for. Muscles tighten in as little as 20 minutes; that means if you’re sitting at a desk for 8 hours every day, your muscles are adapting to that position by getting shorter! On top of that remember that you drove to work, you sat down for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All these postures were the same!

If you are really serious about changing your posture, look at every aspect of your day.

If you sit at a desk, get your hips in extension by performing frequent lunge stretches. Get a stand-up desk. Move around a lot. Try to be constantly moving.
If you drive all day long, set a timer on your phone to go off every 15 minutes that will cue you to sit-up straight and move around a bit. Fidgeting is not a bad thing!