According to Anthony Carey of Function First, having good posture not only helps you minimize chronic joint and muscle pain, but it also helps you maintain your balance, which prevents falls and improves athletic performance. Good posture is simply the proper alignment of your joints: From the front view, the tops of your pelvis and shoulders should appear even and your toes and knees should point forward. From a side view, your ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, and ear should be in alignment. If you draw an imaginary straight line down your body, the line should pass through those parts.
Types of Poor Posture
There are four primary types of poor posture that can affect your balance. In the anterior tilt, the pelvis tilts forward, causing the lower spine to hyperextend, or have too much curvature. This causes the upper spine to flex excessively and the shoulders to round forward, which also causes the belly to appear distended.
In the posterior tilt, the pelvis tilts back, causing the torso to lean backward. This causes the shoulders and head to shift forward to maintain balance, which places a lot of stress upon the shoulders and neck. It also causes your buttocks to appear flat.
Elevation is when one side of the pelvis or a shoulder is higher than the other. This causes one side of the body to feel stiff and shifts too much weight on one hip and leg.
Rotation deviation occurs when one hip or shoulder turns forward, causing one side of the body to appear more forward-facing than the other.
Effects
If you do not have proper alignment in your posture, then you will expend more energy (which causes fatigue) maintaining your balance when you walk, stand, or climb stairs. For example, if you hunch a lot in your upper back and shoulders, you will have a tendency to lean forward when your stand and walk. To prevent falling, your lower back has to activate to counter-balance the weight-shift of the forward lean. The excessive work will eventually cause chronic back and hip pain.
Good posture, however, distributes equal stress and weight throughout your body when you stand, walk, and perform other movements. With proper alignment, your balance is maintained and you may only have minor asymmetry between your left and right sides.
Balance Types
According to Gray Cook, founder of Functional Movement Systems, balance in sports and movement describes two things: your ability to maintain your center of gravity (equilibrium) and having symmetry between your left and right sides of your body.
Since most people have one side of their body more dominant than the other, balance training that addresses the left-right asymmetries will improve your equilibrium. This is a vital component in sports conditioning and injury prevention for athletes and workers who do one-sided sports and one-sided jobs (hockey, baseball, golf, gardening, computers).
Sample Training
One way you can train both balance and improve your posture is to change your base of support. According to Rodney Corn of PTA Global, changing how you stand will change the outcome of the same exercise. For example, you can do a dumbbell shoulder press exercise in different leg positions that will challenge your coordination and balance. Start with the squat stance (feet hip-distance apart) and press the weights overhead for two to three reps. Then place your left foot in front of your body and repeat the overhead press movement. Switch legs and repeat. You may notice that one stance may be stronger than the other. When you get imbalanced, your body should automatically adjust to the new orientation and keep your trunk upright and your hips strong and even.
Other ways to progress include standing on one leg, using one arm instead of two, and standing with both feet together.
Misconceptions
Many people think that balance training requires you to stand on some sort of balance exercise equipment, like a wobble board or BOSU, to improve balance. Instead, start your balance training on solid ground with different feet positions, and often this method is enough to train for balance. Add other balance tools to challenge yourself if you wish, but remember that you stand and walk on solid surface most of the time, not on an unstable surface.
References
- "Pain-Free Program"; Anthony Carey; 2005
- "Athletic Body in Balance"; Gray Cook; 2003
