Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself
When we hear the word posture, we typically throw our shoulders back and sit a bit taller. But the word posture means more than not slouching our shoulders. Our postural position refers to our body’s alignment; while in a good postural position our bones, ligaments, joints, tendons and muscles aren’t being over-stretched or over-strained. So, yes, that means that if we’re in a poor postural position, we are straining our bones, ligaments, tendons, joints and muscles. That’s a lot to risk!
Every bone in the body is meant to be in a specific place in the body. Bones come together in the form of joints and these joints are surrounded by muscles. When the muscles flex, they move the bones, and the body performs the task. It’s a beautiful design and a perfect machine.
Because the muscles surround bones and joints, they have the power to pull the bones and joints out of their proper position. The muscles on the front of the body need to be in balance with the muscles on the back of the body, and the muscles on the left need to be in balance with the muscles on the right. It’s a pretty simple concept but it gets compromised when we have unbalanced habits. For example, most of our lifestyle activities are in front of us and we physically gravitate toward them. We type, we read, we converse, we reach, we walk. The muscles on the front of the body get a lot of action. They get strong simply from our lifestyle. The muscles on the back of the body don’t get as much action during normal daily activity and so, they don’t keep up with the strength of the muscles on the front. Because these muscles are attached to bones and joints, the body gets pulled toward the front. It gets pulled from an upright position to a forward-leaning position. The front muscles are winning and the back muscles are losing. Years of this front-to-back imbalance leads to the often seen, old person’s posture. To maintain an upright posture, the front can’t win; it needs to be a tie between the front and the back.
This concept can occur at each joint in the body. For instance, the shoulder is a ball and socket joint. There are muscles all around this joint and their strength must be balanced to prevent the shoulder from being pulled out of its proper position. The arm (humerus) and shoulder (head of the humerus) get a lot of action. If you have muscle weakness or tightness around the shoulder joint and you reach, lift, push or pull with that arm, the head of the humerus won’t stay aligned properly and it will press, rub, pull or pinch on a nearby structure. Over time this dysfunction will cause fraying, tearing, degeneration and pain.
“Overuse injuries” wouldn’t be injuries if the joints were operating in their proper position all the time.
You have the power to control this. Being strong, being flexible and resting when your muscles are tired will prevent dysfunctional movement. Stretching and strengthening muscles helps to keep your anatomy in balance from front to back and from left to right, so you can set yourself up for success and operate as the well-oiled machine that you were built to be.
