Your muscles function much like the wires that hold up a tall radio or television antenna. If the wires are equally strong on all sides, the antenna will stand up straight. If one of the wires becomes weak or breaks, the antenna will either lean to the side or collapse. The same is true with your body.
Strong muscles keep your body upright and allow you to move. Good muscle strength and balance are critical to maintain proper posture and minimize muscle tension. If the muscles on all sides of your spine are balanced and strong, your body will stand up straight and strong. Unfortunately, most people don’t have balanced and strong muscles – due, typically, to the lack of exercise and to misalignments of the spine.
Muscles are very efficient at getting stronger or weaker in response to the demands placed on them. Since most of us sit at a desk, drive a car, and sit on the sofa at home, many of our muscles are not challenged. Consequently, they become weak. At the same time, the muscles that are constantly used throughout the day become strong. This imbalance of muscle strength contributes to poor posture and chronic muscle tension. Left unchecked, muscle imbalances tend to get worse, not better, because of a phenomenon called “reciprocal inhibition.”
Reciprocal inhibition literally means “shutting down the opposite.” For all of the muscles that move your body in one direction, there are opposing muscles that move the body in the opposite direction. In order to keep these muscles from working against each other, when the body contracts one muscle group, it forces the opposing group to relax — it shuts down the opposite muscles. When consistently only one set of muscles is used, the opposing group, from being continuously shut-down, is liable to atrophy.
People who work at a desk are the most susceptible because all day long the same muscles in the upper back and chest area of the body are used. This means that all day long the body is essentially shutting down the opposite muscles in the middle back. Over time, the muscles in the middle back become very weak because they are not being worked like the muscles in the front. This contributes to poor posture and chronic muscle spasms and pain.
The easiest way to correct this imbalance is to do specific exercises which will increase the strength of the back muscles, along with manual therapy and chiropractic care. Once the muscles in your middle back are strong, the tightness and poor posture simply disappear.
Dr. William J. Stillwell
Related Posts:
Previous post: How Psychology Can Help Prevent The Runs
Next post: Danger Affects Men and Women Differently
{ 1 trackback }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Good article. For people who work sitting at a computer all day, good posture and healthy working habits are key to prevent back pain, and to help treat and recover from existing instances. Unfortunately, most of us find it pretty tricky to change our posture habits – we know how we should sit, but actually remembering to do it is a different matter.
If you work at a computer all day and would like to improve your posture for preventative or cosmetic reasons, or are in treatment for back pain, RSI or other health conditions and have been advised to improve how you use your computer, take the 30 day free trial of PostureMinder – my award-winning software for computer users
I also just stick a small pillow behind my lower back. That way it feels weird if I actually lean my shoulders on the chair… I guess effectively making my chair a stool
Do you recommend those kneeling chairs that kinda force your posture to be correct?
If you’ve ever sat long on one of the knelling chairs you soon notice discomfort on the shins from pressure against the chair. Instead try one of the fitness balls that have become recently popular. They force you to sit up straighter and activate your core muscles. This will improve tone of the postural muscle. Also, use the ball as a tool for stretching. Use what I call the 20/20 rule. Every 20 minutes take a 20 second break and roll forward, backward and on both sides to reduce and muscular tensions that may be building.