Chiropractors focus on spinal health, and a major part of spinal health is posture. Poor posture is not only bad for your health, but can make you look about 10 pounds heavier than you really are. It can take a serious toll on your spine, shoulders, knees, hips, ankles, and feet. Poor posture can lead to a cascade of problems, such as: reduced flexibility, pain in the spine and joints, stretched and tight muscles, decreased respiration, and can prevent you from burning fat, and gaining muscle strength. A chiropractor can assess your spinal health and show you what you can do at home to improve your posture. Here are a few examples :
10 WAYS TO IMPROVE POSTURE:
- FORWARD HEAD POSTURE. This can lead to neck pain and muscle tightness, headaches, numbness & tingling and more. Place your hands behind your head with your elbows out to the side and lightly push your head back into your hands. You should feel the muscles in the back of your neck engage. You can also push your head lightly against the headrest in the car. Hold for a count of 5 and relax. Repeat 10 times a day.
- ROUNDED SHOULDERS. This can cause pain in the neck muscles, shoulders and mid-back. Clasp you hands behind your lower back and push your shoulders back while focusing on squeezing your shoulder blades together. You can also use a doorway and place your hands out to the side on the inside of each side of the door frame. Lean forward so that you open your chest up and squeeze your shoulder blades together.
- ANTERIOR PELVIC TILT. This can cause hip pain in the front, low back pain, and the stomach to protrude forward. To stretch the hip flexor muscle that cause the pelvis to tilt forward, lunge forward bending the knee in one leg until you feel the stretch in the front of the opposite hip.
- WEAK CORE. This can cause low back pain. While sitting in a chair or laying on the floor, suck in the abdominal muscles and count to 5. Repeat 10 times. Increase length of time until you get to 10 with practice. Repeat 10 times. One of the best exercises for the core, is the PLANK. Here is link to learn to do a plank exercise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvxNkmjdhMM and here is a more advanced variation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynUw0YsrmSg
- WEAK GLUTES. These can cause back pain, hip pain and knee pain. The best exercise for strong gluten is the bridge exercise. This not only strengthens the gluten but helps strengthen the whole core. Here is a link to walk you through the bridge exercise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOPkM2pzznc