In this part of your Posture Series journey, we have to talk about things that you need to fix. What is posture? Posture is the fully relaxed standing or sitting position when you are relying on Bracing muscles completely. When in this position, Bracing muscles are strengthened and by practicing posture, we counteract the sympathetic tone and String muscle contraction of the day, keeping our body in balance and Tuning our Body Guitar. Poor positions are revealed during posture and these poor positions expose weakness in Bracing muscle strength. These weaknesses and the posture flaws are what I call the Stability Gap.
From Chapter 5 in my book “Uprise: The Body Guitar Theory and Back Pain Liberation”: Imagine if I laid out an agility ladder and had a bunch of 10-year-olds run through, doing intricate footwork between the ropes. You would be surprised at how uncoordinated most of them would look. This is because as a person becomes more stable, they can become more coordinated.1 Stability is necessary for coordination to develop, and 10-year-olds are often growing so fast that their stability is still catching up.2 Between the ages of 10 and 20, stability often greatly improves, and many of us are at the most coordinated points in our lives in our 20s.3 As we age or get injured and become less stable,4 you would expect that this loss of stability would lead to a loss of coordination that follows exactly as coordination was gained but in reverse.5 But this is not what happens. Because we have developed neural patterns of motion with our coordination, when we lose our stability, we actually maintain these neural patterns. We are able to complete many coordinated movements.6
Think of an aged basketball player who, when younger, spent many years trying to perfect his layup. Then, years later, after having not done a layup for decades, he is able to complete a layup with perfect form after three or four tries. This is not because he still has stability but because he has neural patterns of coordination that took years to develop and are still present. But there is a gap between his coordination and Bracing muscle stability. To protect him from his own instability, his body has to come up with other ways to create stability. We call this gap a Stability Gap. String muscles will become chronically shorter to mimic stability. Joints and joint capsules tighten to mimic stability. Fascia tightens to mimic stability. A breath-holding compensation begins to mimic stability. Eventually, as the joints do not tolerate instability, they will begin to build bone to stabilize the joint. We call this bone growth arthritis. All of these problems need to be unwound as the unsuspecting back pain patient, who is feeling better, has no idea that they are fighting to overcome each of these problems.
In the book, I then go through specific instances of muscle tightness, joint capsule and fascia tightness associated with each of the Bracing muscles that create stability. Because when we don’t have stability, but do have coordination, we have a gap that must be closed. Often, more often than many realize, these compensations are hidden right before our eyes. We don’t notice the tightness in one hip joint, or the winging of one scapula, or any of the other compensations because they have happened slowly and beneath our area of focus.
When someone tries to fix their posture, these compensations become red flashing lights that had somehow missed their notice. Now they are the all they can see: the forward head, the forward shoulder, the lordotic pelvis, the out-turned feet. They become obsessed with fixing these problems without realizing that the problem is the Stability Gap, not the compensation. When they work on the compensation without fixing the Stability Gap, the compensation returns. Sometimes, as soon as they miss a day of stretching.
This is why you need a professional. A professional, like a physical therapist, can identify the posture flaw, the weakness and the Stability Gap. I tell my patients who play golf: you never want to take golf tips from your buddy on the tee. He may see the one flaw you have, but he doesn’t see the four compensations you use to make the ball land in the fairway. A golf pro would fix the flaw and the compensations. Same with a physical therapist. Which Bracing muscles are weak? (Parasympathetic high-tone muscles that pull unstable joints into stability) Because when you find these ares of weakness, and take the months that it requires to regain both the strength and the endurance, then the stretching makes lasting effects.
But one note of caution: The areas that are weak will crop up over and over in your life. The muscle that is weaker on one side, when you stop doing your exercises, six months later will be weak again. It is just the way our human body works. How will you know? You will start to get compensations again. So take this effort to fix your posture as a a time of learning about yourself. A lesson that you will use for the rest of your life.
And… get your body in tune!
- Kibler, W. B., et al. (2006). “The role of core stability in athletic function.” Sports Medicine, 36(3), 189–198. doi:10.2165/00007256-200636030-00001
- Piek, J. P., et al. (2008). “The relationship between motor coordination and physical fitness in children.”Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 50(6), 412–417. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2008.03014.x
- Malina, R. M., et al. (2004). “Growth, maturation, and physical activity.” Human Kinetics, Chapter 11: “Motor Development and Performance.” doi:10.5040/9781492596820
- Horak, F. B. (2006). “Postural orientation and equilibrium: What do we need to know about neural control of balance to prevent falls?” Age and Ageing, 35(Suppl 2), ii7–ii11. doi:10.1093/ageing/afl077
- Seidler, R. D., et al. (2010). “Motor control and aging: Links to age-related brain structural, functional, and biochemical effects.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 34(5), 721–733. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.10.005
- Spirduso, W. W., et al. (2005). “Physical activity, aging, and motor skill performance.” Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, 33(1), 19–24. doi:10.1097/00003677-200501000-00005