Your Definitive Guide to Understanding and Improving Your Posture (part 3)
What is posture? And why is it important?
But what actually is our posture? Let’s start by defining some terms. There is a massive difference when we discuss the types of posture that I will term ‘relaxed’ and ‘active’. Our posture when we sit, stand, sleep or walk ideally is relaxed; we should be consciously thinking about our posture in these instances. In contrast, our posture when we are doing strenuous activities is active; it’s something we should be actively aware of. If you believe that we should be thinking about our posture all the time, stay tuned for part 5 for why I don’t think that’s a good idea.
This distinction is important because there are very different demands on our bodies depending on whether we are standing talking to a friend or trying to lift 200 pounds off the ground. These different situations have very different impacts on our body, and ‘good’ posture should be based on this context. Our active posture situations fall much more into the realm of exercise technique, with different exercises requiring different postural considerations. Check out our Woven YouTube channel for exercise demos where you can see the desired technique for specific exercises. The rest of this article will talk about relaxed posture, because most of the strategies promoted by the fitness industry don’t actually work for improving your posture when you are relaxed.
Whether our posture is relaxed or active, it is at a fundamental level a reflection of the way we hold ourselves upright against the demands of gravity. Gravity is always trying to smush us into the floor, and we have to rely on the muscles in our body to keep us upright. Which muscles we use, however, is influenced by our posture. It’s a bit of a chicken or egg question, because the relative strength of different muscle groups will also influence our posture. But most importantly, contrary to popular belief, there is not a good or bad way to do this. If we are standing, for example, we have to rely on the muscles of our legs and trunk to hold us upright. Whether we subconsciously rely more on our glutes, hamstrings, abs, or lower back are going to lead to different postures, but none of these postures are more likely to lead to injury.
