- Do fitness exercises to fix your posture. Posture is more than just a muscular issue. It is also a neurological issue. Your posture has likely been an ongoing issue for years which means it is ingrained in your psyche. Fitness exercises will help your muscular strength but it will not address the underlying neurological habits that cause you to jut your head forward or tilt your pelvis. That being said, fitness exercises can serve to enhance corrective work when done properly.
- Treat posture exercises like your gym exercises. Sets of posture exercises are not about reps and pushing as hard as you can. They are about good form and quality reps. A lot of posture exercises are very mental and rely on good mind-body connection in order to be impactful. You need to be working those neurological pathways more than the physical ones. Posture has a muscular element to it but it’s the neurological effort that people neglect which can limit their gains.
- Just sitting up straight is all you need to do. You can’t fix your posture by just thinking about it in the moment. You need to do enough reps to reprogram your neurology that is distorting your posture. You get into a given posture because your body decides that it is the easiest way to do your most common activities rather than your brain telling you to sit up straight. The longer that posture has been maladapted, the longer it will take to correct. And just thinking about it for a few minutes a day, will not be enough to overcome years of maladaptation.
- You only need to focus on the part of the spine that is the issue. You need to address the entire spine as a unit, from the pelvis to the head, as well as the hunchback that you are concerned about. You can think of the spine as a chain where one end will impact the other end. For example, if you tilt your pelvis into neutral, your head may tilt forward to compensate and vice versa. This means that in order to fix the hunchback that you are concerned about, you need to reestablish a good chain across the whole spine to prevent any maladaptive compensations.
- Stretching the muscle is enough. Although added flexibility can be beneficial for the muscle, the main focus should be on building the strength of the muscle. You maintain your posture constantly which means your muscles need the stamina and strength to hold that posture, especially as you are training the muscles. This stamina and strength can only be gained with strength training and not just stretching.