How push ups can improve your posture.
How many times have you seen your posture in a picture and cringed? How many times have you felt those life draining back aches from sitting or standing in a shitty position to long? How many times have you tried to “sit up straight” only to find your body is too tired to maintain that position for long?
Push ups and posture might not seem like they are things that would go together. But the truth is that learning how to do a proper push up can significantly improve your overall body posture. Both static and dynamic postures. Push ups teach us how to control our body as one complete unit, helping muscles to work in coordination. Push ups can help to develop strength and stabilization through the core muscles and posture muscles.
Improving both the strength as well as the stability of these muscles can make it easier to move through multiple ranges of motion with ease and confidence. Strengthening and learning how to use your posture muscles can help to reduce back pain and headaches. Feel taller, stand straighter, and move with more ease, but before we get ahead of ourselves let's clear up a few things.
So what actually is “posture” ? - The position in which someone holds their body while sitting, standing or moving. Poor or bad posture is when certain muscles get overactive, underactive, lengthen or shortened thus becoming weak and creating dysfunction and compensation patterns.
Dynamic posture is how you are holding your body when you're moving. Static posture is how you hold your body when you are still. Both are incredibly important because as a human we do both on a regular basis. The ability to easily translate between static and dynamic postures helps us feel confident and stable when we move.
Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle to exert force consistently and repeatedly over a period of time. This is the reason why it's hard for you to “sit up straight” or stand up straight for extended periods of time. If your posture muscles have little opportunity to work, they will have low endurance. Doing exercises that help improve muscular endurance like push ups will strengthen your posture muscles over time making it easier to have healthy posture more of the time.
Your primary muscles used in a push up include your chest muscles, shoulders, triceps, core & posture stabilizers, and serratus anterior . For most people serratus anterior is a weak and undeveloped muscle because we don't do a lot of pushing or pressing activities. This is the same reason why the triceps and chest muscles are often weak and uncoordinated when trying to do a pushup.
Many people also have a weak or underactive core and posture stabilizers that are overactive and fatigue quickly. For many adults who sit behind a computer all day the upper back muscles are often stretched and overactive from holding your head out in front of you while working. When we sit behind a computer we often let our shoulders roll forward, extend from our chin and let our belly drop into our lap. While this might feel fine for the work day, it's a rough time for your posture muscles. This is how imbalance occurs over time
Certain muscles like a weak serratus anterior and tight chest and shoulders muscles can make it hard for your shoulder to move through the correct range of motion while trying to complete a push up . Cervical injuries, tightness, and disk issues can make it hard to keep your head and neck in a neutral position during push ups. For who have a history of neck or shoulder injuries or postural disorders should consider starting with mobility and soft tissue work to release their restrictions and improve their range of motion. After addressing soft tissue restriction, improving range of motion with mobility they then can begin with wall push ups before attempting to do a regular floor or more advanced push ups.
So now you know a bit more about why and how push ups are good for you. Basic, easy to access movements that help improve your posture and learning how to use your body as one unit can help to improve your overall health by making movement easier. Over time this can help to Reduce general pain and fatigue as muscular endurance improves.
If you are healthy and injury free, try adding push ups to your activity a few days a week and feel your overall posture improve!
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