How Does Posture Affect Your Performance?
This image shows the most common postural deviations. While a balanced or ideal posture exists, in my 20 years of experience, I don’t recall one client coming to me with balanced posture. Compensations are more common than not.
Let’s consider each of these postures on their own:
Neutral Balanced: A vertical line will bisect the ear, shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle joints.
Lordosis: Marked by an increase in lumbar curve and anterior pelvic tilt.
Kyphosis: Marked by an increase in thoracic curve and an anterior pelvic tilt.
Flat back: A reduction in both lumbar and thoracic, posterior pelvic tilt, and forward head carriage. Very common in those with years spent in the military from standing at attention and carrying a heavy backpack.
Sway Back: Tendency toward a posterior pelvic tilt, hips migrating forward, increased thoracic curve and forward head carriage.
Scoliosis: Presence of a rotation or twist within a section of the spine consisting of multiple joints along with an elevation of one side of the pelvis matched with depression of the same side shoulder.
Layered (not shown): is a combination of Lordosis and Kyphosis, typically along with forward head carriage.
This image is a rather simplified portrayal of the postures. Each can be more or less severe. Plus there is also the impact upon both the upper and lower extremities, which we will consider soon enough.
How do these postures impact movement and performance?
The easiest way to show it is for you to feel it. Go ahead and stand up and purposely put yourself into a thoracic kyphosis posture, slouching, with a dropped rib cage, internal rotation of the arms from the shoulders, and even some forward head migration. Now try to take a deep inhale and fill up your lungs. What do you feel? How deep a breath can you take? Now stand up nice and tall and try again. Do you feel the difference?
Get back into that altered posture and try to flex your arms, lifting them overhead without changing the posture. How far do the arms get? Now try rotating the ribcage with arms across your chest without turning the hips. How much rotation do you get? Try each again with good posture and feel the difference. If you have access to a mirror, see the difference.
If your posture prevents full lung inhalation, are you getting fatigued because you are deconditioned or because you can’t supply your cells with the required oxygen and eliminate excess carbon dioxide?
If your posture is preventing proper shoulder range of motion, maybe that shoulder impingement, unresolved carpal tunnel symptoms, or those pesky migraines may be related more to your posture than anything else!
If you play just about any sport or participate in most activities, rotation and diagonal patterns are a must. But if you can't properly rotate from the thoracic spine, those patterns will be inhibited. That will place more compensatory stress on the lumbar & cervical spine and the hip & shoulder joints.
The impact of the pelvic position
I mentioned that the lower torso and the position of the pelvis is a huge driver for what happens below. An anterior pelvic tilt or rotation forward is much more common than a posterior tilt. As with spinal posture, variations exist. When it comes to the pelvis, you can have one side rotating more than the other, which adds complexity in correcting. Let’s stick with the basics. This image shows what happens in the lower torso when an anterior tilt is present.
As the pelvis rotates forward (anterior) the femurs are internally rotated, which drives the knees inward, in turn placing great stress on the connective tissue. To prevent knee injury, the body allows the ankles to collapse or pronate. As the ankle pronates, the arch flattens. There is a cascade of events happening from the center down, all due to an out-of-position pelvis.
Consider the prevalence of plantar fascitis, achilles tendonitis, and general knee pain. How many therapists (much less individuals) are investigating posture and core function as causal factors and the true key to healing the body and optimizing movement?
The image shows what happens with an anterior tilt. You can imagine what a posterior tilt will do. Rather than structure rotating and collapsing inward, the femurs rotate outward and ultimately the arches elevate as foot supinates. Less common but still problematic.
As we did with the postures, go ahead and stand up again and create good posture. Looking in a mirror, purposely rotate the pelvis. Move from anterior to posterior tilt and see and feel how the femurs, knee, and lower legs respond. This is happening from a static posture. Every single movement and stress is amplified when you are dynamically moving. The risk of injury increases greatly and optimal levels of performance are decreased.
Remember what I said in last week’s article: Everything the body does or doesn’t do is for a reason. The better you understand this, the easier it is to create and execute a plan that is efficient, effective, and safer.
Movement matters, and if you understand movement, life will become so much more enjoyable!
This isn’t the end of the story; I have much more to share with you. If you have any questions regarding your own situation regarding either unresolved movement challenges or obstacles hampering your performance, contact me for a consultation.