Posture Strength Training
Good posture requires strength. Weakened muscles anywhere in the body will lead to a cascading effect. In other words, a weak or injured forearm muscle in itself won’t cause bad posture. However, it may lead to a change in your arm position, which leads to a change in shoulder position, then your neck, then your spine. Before you know it you have bad posture and a pinched nerve. Of course, you should always consult a doctor, do research, and use your common sense before beginning any exercise routine.
Strengthen Your Entire Body
It is critical that you approach posture and strength training from a whole body perspective. Some exercises will have more immediate effect than others. Early on I used a free app called Stronglifts 5X5. The program is simple and well tested and the app tells you everything you need to do including how to do each of the 5 exercises for 5 sets and 5 repetitons (that is where the 5X5 comes from). An explanation of this program and how to safely do each exercise will take several pages and videos, so for more information you can check out the Stronglifts website.
I had lower back pain for many years. Strength training, specifically deadlifts (which is part of the 5×5 program) dramatically improved my lower back. Other things that helped were a new bed, proper sleep position, and learning to stretch. Notice, I said deadlifts helped my lower back. I used various back extension machines at my gym, and they helped a little, but my back became way stronger and my pain disappeared when I started to deadlift.
Free Weights vs. Machines
Free weights are weights that are not attached to a device or machine. The most common free wights are dumbbells, barbells and kettle bells. You can do most gym exercises with free weights or a machine. For example, you can do a bench press with a bench press machine, or with a bench and barbell (or dumbbells). Free weights have an advantage in that they force you to use several muscles all at once. That is why they are called “compound” exercises. Free weights also use stabilizer muscles that machines don’t. This makes free weights more natural and more like real life movements. This also makes free weights generally better for improving posture.
Lifting heavy weights would
be the last thing you’d want to do a few days after throwing out your back. I started with very light weights and over a few weeks started to build up my strength. I tried exercise machines but I found that free weight exercises helped my back much more. I have also heard many other people say the same thing. Also, by doing a few 5×5 free weight exercises, you can target all the muscles in your body. This is much better than having to hit dozens of free weight machines to accomplish the same thing. This is especially important for posture since your core muscles (which include many hard to target locations) cannot be neglected if you want to get better. Your neck, for example, must be strong. Forward head posture or “text neck” is increasingly common due to our use of electronic devices and computer screens that encourage bad neck alignment. Text neck can cause neck pain and even disc and nerve damage. Try this, go a wall, put your heals against the wall and stand up straight. If your back and neck don’t touch the wall, you have lots to work on. It is estimated that every one inch of forward head posture causes an additional 10 pounds of weight on your head. If your head was 4 inches forward when standing against the wall, you are putting a 5 gallon jug of extra strain on your spine. You fix this by relearning good posture (I suggest trying some good posture gadgets) and strengthening your muscles through compound free weight exercises.