Posture Correction Guide

You don’t need to buy hundreds of dollars of corrective belts, follow Internet celebrities to practice complex movements for half an hour every day, and you don’t need to frequently correct and break bones. As long as you get rid of 3 daily high-frequency bad habits, and then combine them with weak muscle activation training 1-2 times a week, 80% of the problems of rounded shoulders, neck protrusion, and anterior pelvic tilt will be visible to the naked eye in 2-3 months.

Last year, I met a girl who was doing UI design. Her neck protruded 4 cm, and her shoulders were so round that even wearing an oversize T-shirt made her look hunched. She had saved up money to buy an internet-famous corrective belt, which she wore for 8 hours a day. After wearing it for two months and taking it off, it still looked the same. To be honest, I have seen too many people fall into similar traps. People always think that posture correction is something that requires a lot of money and hard work, but it is really not the case.

In fact, there are currently two directions in the sports rehabilitation circle's thinking on posture correction: one is structure first, which believes that as long as there are skeletal alignment problems such as scoliosis and pelvic rotation, the structure must be adjusted through bone setting and chiropractic before muscle training.； The other group prioritizes function. They believe that 90% of ordinary people's posture problems do not reach the point of bone deformation. They are all caused by poor muscle tension caused by long-term bad habits - for example, people who always lower their heads have too tight anterior neck muscles and too weak back neck muscles. People who always put their shoulders on the keyboard when typing have tight pectoralis minor muscles and cannot pull their rhomboids. In essence, "tight muscles are too stiff and weak muscles cannot exert force." If this problem is solved, the posture will naturally be correct. Among the more than 300 ordinary users I have come into contact with, less than 5% really need to adjust their structure first. Most of them just change their habits and then strengthen their weak muscles.

Do you always do these things unconsciously? When I'm typing on the keyboard at work, I get so absorbed that my shoulders almost touch my ears and my neck stretches forward like a big white goose waiting to be fed. ； I was lying on the sofa watching short videos. My whole body sank in, and my waist was hanging free. After two hours of watching, my waist didn’t hurt when I woke up. ； When sitting, I always cross my legs, and whichever leg is more comfortable is kept crossed. As time goes by, not only are my hips crooked, but my legs also look thicker and thinner. It’s nothing to do these movements once, but if you do them for 10 hours a day, that’s more than 3,000 hours a year. Your muscles have long been accustomed to this wrong force-generating mode. If you spend 10 minutes a day correcting them, and the remaining 10 hours are spent on building them, it’s weird that they can be useful.

When I was practicing powerlifting before, I always used my right hand to carry the barbell. The shoulder height difference was almost 2cm, and the neckline was crooked when I wore a T-shirt. I followed the online tutorials to practice YTWL Flying Birds for 15 minutes every day. After practicing for more than half a month, I changed a lot. It didn't go away, but the more I practiced the trapezius, the more swollen it became. Later, when I saw a rehabilitation practitioner, I found out that the rhomboids on my right side were so useless that they could no longer exert force. Every time I practiced flyes, the trapezius muscle was compensating. This meant that the more I practiced the wrong muscles, the more developed they became, making my posture problems worse. Later, I spent a week without practicing any movements, and just practiced the feeling of "shoulder blade retraction" - when sitting, I lowered my shoulders, then pinched them back, and felt the feeling of two bones in my back squeezing into the middle. I held it for 3 seconds at a time, and I did several sets every day until I could naturally sink my shoulders as soon as I raised my hands. Combined with unilateral dumbbell rowing twice a week, my shoulder height returned in more than a month, and even the shoulder and neck pain that I often suffered before was reduced.

Many people have asked me before, "Can standing against the wall really correct your posture?" I really can't say directly whether it's right or wrong. If you have particularly poor muscle perception, you can naturally contract your abdomen when standing, leaving only a palm thickness between your waist and the wall. Standing for 3-5 minutes at a time can really help you find the correct body alignment. ； But if you insist on pushing your waist against the wall, bending your shoulders back, and standing for half an hour at a time in order to pursue "standards", it's really useless. I once met a patient with lumbar protrusion who stood for 20 minutes a day to correct the anterior pelvic tilt. After standing, the pain was so painful that he couldn't even get out of bed, which actually increased the pressure on the lumbar spine.

If you really want to change your posture, you don't need to make any complicated weekly plans. Just start with small daily things: when sitting, your butt fills two-thirds of the chair and your feet are flat on the ground. If you really can't help but cross your legs, switch your legs and don't always cross them one way.； When typing on the keyboard, pull the keyboard a little closer to you. It’s best if your elbows can rest on the table. Don’t cross your shoulders. ； When swiping your phone, hold it up to the level of your eyes and don't lower your head. It's easy to hold it up at first, but you'll get used to it after a few days of practice. These little things may seem inconspicuous, but if you stick to them for half a month, you will feel that your shoulders, neck and waist are much more comfortable.

Don’t always be fooled by the “right-angled shoulders”, “one-line shoulders” and “perfect pelvis” PUAs on the Internet. Normal people’s shoulders have a natural tilt of 10-30 degrees. Not many people are born with flat clavicle. Hard concave right-angled shoulders can easily lead to acromion impact and pain even when raising the arms.； There are also many people who talk about "anterior pelvic tilt". In fact, many of them are caused by thin people with thin abdominal walls, or mothers who have separated their rectus abdominis after giving birth and appear to have a protruding belly. This is not really a pelvic problem at all. If you don’t have pain and don’t have any discomfort when moving, a slight bump in your shoulders or a slight protrusion of your neck is really nothing, and you don’t need to mess around for the so-called “perfect posture”.

Of course, if you already have long-term shoulder and neck pain, low back pain, or have been diagnosed with scoliosis or pelvic rotation, don't follow blind exercises on the Internet. Go to a regular hospital or rehabilitation institution to see a professional first, which is better than anything else.