Posture correction training program

There is no need to sign up for thousands of private lessons or buy IQ correction belts. For the most common bad postures of rounded shoulders, forward head extension, and forward pelvic tilt among sedentary people, practice for 20 minutes each time 5 days a week. If you insist on it for 3 weeks, you will see visible improvements, and as long as Maintain basic daily habits and you will not rebound - this is the most universal training framework that I have summarized after 3 years of posture adjustment and helping more than 120 ordinary office workers and students adjust. There are no complicated movements and no equipment required. You can follow it directly.

It's interesting to say that the posture correction community is actually quite noisy now. The rehabilitationists insist that tense muscles must be released first before strengthening them, otherwise the more you practice, the more distorted they will become.； Fitness practitioners believe that as long as the weak side muscles are strengthened, the tense muscles will naturally be stretched, and loosening them is a waste of time. My impression from this experience is that you really don’t need to stand in line, it just depends on your own condition: if you sit for more than 10 hours a day, and your shoulders and neck crack when you turn your head, and you press the pectoralis minor and upper trapezius muscles so painfully that you gasp, then it will definitely be better to relax first and then practice. ； If you just hold your breasts a little when taking pictures and don't feel any pain at ordinary times, it's absolutely fine to directly train your weak muscles.

Last year, a young girl who worked as a short video operator came to me. She sat for 12 hours a day to edit the film, and her back looked thicker even when she was wearing an oversized sweater. She started practicing YTWL online, but after a week of practice, her shoulders were so sore that she couldn't lift them up, and her posture didn't improve at all. I asked her to roll a mineral water bottle on her pectoralis minor for 3 minutes before each practice, and then use a foam roller to roll on her trapezius muscles for 5 minutes, and then do 15 sets of YTWL for a total of 3 sets, plus 2 sets of glute bridges, each time taking a total of only 20 minutes. About 20 days ago, she sent me photos of her wearing a sling. Her shoulders were basically flat, and her back was a lot thinner.

You don’t need to practice in a stuck sequence of movements. Just touch two places before each practice: one is the chest near the armpit. If it is as hard as a piece of frozen butter, roll it until it feels softer before starting. Otherwise, no matter how hard you exert your back muscles, you will not be able to open the tight knotted chest muscles, and you will end up with shoulder pain. If you always feel that your back is tired when you stand, and you can fit a fist under your waist when you lie flat, don’t do plank support right away. Do 3 sets of glute bridges, 15 in each set, to feel the force in your buttocks, and then loosen the tightened quadratus lumborum muscles. I have seen too many people do the plank action and end up straining their waists, which is not worth the gain.

Of course, many colleagues say that posture problems are essentially a matter of daily habits. Training can only account for 30%, and the remaining 70% depends on daily attention. I really agree with this point. If you turn around after practice and just sit on the sofa and scroll through your phone for three hours, and your neck is stretched out like a duck while looking at the computer at work, then no matter how hard you practice, it will be in vain. I generally don’t ask users to deliberately “raise their head, raise their chest, and retract their abdomen.” Deliberately raising your chest will easily push your waist forward, which will in turn aggravate the forward tilt of the pelvis. I just have a small request: stand up for 2 minutes every 40 minutes, and stand lightly with the back of your head against the wall for 30 seconds. You don’t have to stand straight and strain your whole body. Standing relaxed is better than slumping in a chair all the time.

Speaking of which, I have to mention the correction belt. Don’t believe the nonsense that “wear it for 2 hours a day and say goodbye to rounded shoulders in a week.” I once had a user who wore the correction belt for half a year. After taking it off, the muscles in the back would not work hard on their own at all. Instead, the hunchback became more serious than before. At best, that thing is for temporary rescue, such as wearing it for a day to hold up the scene when taking wedding photos or attending important gatherings. Wearing it for a long time is purely lazy, and the muscles will not shrink on their own. When you take it off, it will still be bent the same way.

In fact, this plan is really flexible, and you don’t have to devote a whole chunk of time to practice. I used to have a programmer user who sat at work for 10 hours every day and couldn't spare a whole chunk of time to exercise, so he broke the movements into pieces. Every time he went fishing, he would sit on a chair and do 10 seated rows, and do 10 glute bridges during lunch break. He could practice for 20 minutes a day. When he came back to me three weeks later, his rounded shoulders were mostly cured. The effect was much better than that of someone who practiced hard for 2 hours on weekends. To put it bluntly, what muscles need is continuous small stimulation, not that you are so sore that you can't lift it after training all at once.

Many people always pursue perfection when correcting their posture at the beginning. They should have square shoulders, a neutral pelvic position, and not extend their head forward. In fact, it is really unnecessary. I have always felt that the best posture is not to fully comply with any anatomical standards, but to feel comfortable all over the body when you are in it, without suffering from shoulder and back pain. It is enough that the whole person looks relaxed and generous. Don’t worry about the standard body shape on the Internet. Move for 20 minutes every day and you will slowly see changes.