When I walk the dogs in the morning I don’t wear my glasses. My eyes aren’t all that bad and when I see someone walking towards me I can almost always guess their age. And I’ll bet you can, too. We pick up these clues from someone’s posture and by their gait, or how they walk, and there is one woman at the park that I aspire to be.
Without my glasses on, this woman appears to be in her late 20’s early 30’s. With my glasses on, she’s clearly in her mid-late seventies. Pretty cool, huh? That’s what I want to be like when I grow up. She has great posture and she kind of just kicks along when she strides. Most women her age are standing/walking with their chins jutted forward (forward head) and their backs hunched (kyphosis). Their arms no longer swing, they just kind of hang there. Most of them also limp or shuffle, not picking their feet up when they stride. Not this lady. She looks like a model. I love her; she’s my inspiration and I’ve never said more than, ‘Good Morning’, as I go through my morning wrestling match with the dogs.
Here’s an easy way to begin correcting your posture:
1. Sitting on a ball or a desk chair, rest your forearms (fingertips touching) on a desk or table.
2. Drop your mid-back towards the floor.
3. Pull your chin towards your neck as you press the back of the head against an imaginary board lying on your back from your head to your hips.
4. Also press your low back into the same imaginary board.
5. Once you have found your position. Brace all the muscles in your hips, arms and spine. Bracing these muscles is like clenching your fist. You have put your spine into a new shape and you are bracing your muscles to hold your new alignment. Hold the bracing for 10 seconds.
This exercise is not as easy as it looks. It’s not too hard to drop the spine or to pull the chin in but you have to also pull the low back towards that imaginary board. You cannot make a correction by correcting only one segment of the spine. The mid-spine is not hunching all by itself. It is being allowed to hunch by the weaknesses above and below it. Address all three areas and the change will be rapid.
‘Tis true, ’tis true. If you were to use correct posture whenever you were standing or walking you would strengthen your abs more than performing sit-ups ’til you puked. It is a matter of very high repetition and low levels of work. I get comments all the time along the lines of: Of course, you have a flat stomach you do Pilates all day. Wrong. I don’t do Pilates all day; I teach Pilates all day. Secondly, I haven’t done a sit-up in over a decade: bad back. Lastly, my abs are very solid. I stand up straight as often as I remember (dancers are notorious for horrible posture) and when I exercise I try to keep my alignment.
It’s exciting to look back at 2009 and know that we made it through. We kicked and screamed through the economics of it all and celebrated and rejoiced in remembering what is really important. I think that the most popular posts of 2009 reflect what 2009 taught us. Health and great friends are way more important than world craziness…. Here are your top choices for 2009:
In some cases, you can exercise ’til the cows come home (does anyone know where this expression came from? Really? ‘Til the cows come home?!) and you still get no improvement in your bone density. So is it all a huge waste of time? No. Especially not if your fracture rate was reduced 300% compared to your peers who didn’t exercise.
In any case, one of the more remarkable studies he did was to test muscular endurance on those
with and without a history of back pain. When holding a sit-up type position, those with a history of back pain were stronger. The exact position is this: Seated with the knees up and the soles of the feet down, the person being tested is asked to lean back against a wedge.