Benefits of posture correction

The core benefit of posture correction has never been as simple as "becoming more beautiful and taller". It is essentially the calibration of the body's biomechanical structure. It can be as small as relieving recurring shoulder, neck and low back pain, as large as improving sports performance, improving mental state, and even solving many minor problems that you have never thought of as "posture."

I have been recovering from exercise for almost 6 years, and I have met so many people who initially came to me with the purpose of "wanting to practice right-angled shoulders" or "wanting to change my XO-shaped legs to look better in skirts." But by the end of the practice, they said the biggest gains were "no more headaches," "no more soreness in the knees when climbing stairs," and "no more stiffness in the waist after sitting for 8 hours at work." There used to be a 28-year-old back-end programmer who started looking at the computer 12 hours a day. He would stretch his head forward 15 degrees, which is often called "neck probing." He initially suffered from migraine headaches, which he had at least twice a week. The pain made his eyes swell. He went to the hospital and checked his body, but nothing was wrong. The doctor asked him to check if it was a cervical spine problem. He didn't believe it at first, saying that his cervical spine didn't hurt except for a little stiffness? When evaluating the results, when I pressed his deep neck muscles, they were as hard as frozen rice cakes, and his upper trapezius muscles almost reached the base of his ears. Later, I didn’t do anything fancy, just 10 minutes of deep neck muscle activation every day, and adding a monitor stand on his desk to force him to look up at the screen. Within 3 months, he said that he had almost no migraines now, and even his previous problems of feeling tight in the chest and out of breath were all gone. That was because when the head was stretched forward, the rib cage was always being pulled, and it was normal for him to be unable to breathe.

Speaking of which, some people may want to criticize you for "posture anxiety". My shoulders are a bit uneven and there is no pain. Do I need to put in the effort? I have to be fair on this point: the functionalists in the sports rehabilitation circle have never recognized the "uniform standard of perfect posture." For example, some people are born with one shoulder slightly higher. As long as there is no pain and there is no restriction in raising hands and turning the shoulder, there is no need to force it. On the contrary, those who want to pursue the same swan neck and right-angled shoulders as the Internet celebrities, forcefully break the cervical spine and get shoulder slimming injections, causing damage to the levator scapulae muscle and pain when raising the arm. I have had three of them in the past six months, which is completely unnecessary.

Interestingly, when it comes to posture adjustment, practitioners in different fields have quite different ideas: traditional bone-setting masters prefer to reset the misaligned small joints first. Many people suffer from acute cervical vertebra compression or waist flash. They find a reliable master to reset and feel comfortable on the spot. However, if the muscle strength is not adjusted later, it can take up to half a month or three months. Months later, the crooked place will still go back; when we do exercise rehabilitation, we prefer "muscle balance first". After all, the crooked bones are mostly due to the different pulling strength of the muscles on both sides. Just like the two ropes of the tent are of different tightness, the pole will naturally be crooked. Adjust the rope to a suitable tightness, and the pole will naturally be straight. There is no right or wrong between the two ideas, as long as the symptoms are correct.

There was a little girl who was a sophomore in high school. She had had her breasts hunched over for almost 6 years. She never dared to wear short-sleeved clothes in summer. She said that her trapezius muscles were too big and her back was too thick, so she kept her head down when walking. When her mother brought her here, I assessed her and found out that she was actually too embarrassed to raise her head due to her pubertal development. Her shoulders were rounded due to long-term holding of her breasts. The muscles in her back were stretched and she had no strength to pull her shoulders. I didn't arrange any intensive training for her. I just came home from school and stood against the wall for 10 minutes every day, and did some YW flying movements to train her upper back. About half a year ago, her mother sent me a message, saying that the little girl now actively asked to buy a suspender skirt to wear, and she even raised her hands on stage during the school speech last week. It sounds silly to say it, but after the body is stretched, people will really dare to raise their heads and speak more unconsciously. That kind of confidence cannot be cultivated through psychological suggestion. When the body is stretched, the whole person's state will naturally open up.

To be honest, I have been through the pitfalls of posture correction before. When I first joined the industry, I followed the "improving anterior pelvic tilt" exercises online. I supported the plank for 3 minutes every day. After practicing for half a month, my waist became even more sore. Later I found out that my iliopsoas muscles were too tight, pulling the pelvis forward. I had to relax the tight muscles first, and then train the core and gluteal muscles. Otherwise, the more I practiced, the more severe the core compensation would be. Now I can stand all day to visit exhibitions and sit all afternoon to write plans, and my waist doesn’t hurt as much as before. This is the most tangible benefit.

In fact, in the final analysis, posture correction is never a "shortcut to beauty", and there is no need to set a perfect standard. It is more like "calibrating" your own body - if you feel that you are always tired and always in pain, or you are always easily injured when you want to exercise, you might as well first see if there is something wrong with your usual posture. Once you adjust it, you will find that many minor problems that have been bothering you for a long time are actually not that complicated to solve.