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sophia_sol) wrote2021-12-04 02:19 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2021-12-04 02:19 pm
Entry tags:
how to have good posture
As a child I was constantly told "stand up straight!" but it was never explained to me how to actually achieve that, beyond "shoulders back, head up." So I spent a lot of time thinking that standing up straight was annoying and uncomfortable and I hated it.
This year I've been working really hard on getting my posture figured out, and it's hard but actually achievable it turns out! So what I've determined is that for me to stand up straight, as someone whose body doesn't have muscle memory on how to do that, I have to pay attention to all of the following things:
- unroll my ankles
- feet pointed forward
- feet slightly apart from each other
- knees unlocked, and the one that bends too far backward brought in line with the good one
- tilt my hips the other direction
- butt muscles engaged
- core muscles engaged
- uncurl my back
- shake out my shoulders to help get them situated in a way that my arms hang right
- straighten my neck
- lift my chin
- get head balanced properly over my centre
That's a lot! And I had to basically figure it all out for myself.
But even if I had been given a list like this as a kid, I still would not have been able to achieve sustainably good posture at the time, because I did not know how to engage my butt muscles and it turns out those are vital for good posture.
Here's the thing. Somehow or other, as a wee baby learning as babies do through trial and error how it works to have a body, I apparently never figured out how to make proper use of my butt muscles. As a result, I have spent my whole life compensating for a very weak butt by using weird joint leverage and coopting less-strong muscles to come together to do the job of the butt -- and, crucially, without ever realising that a) I wasn't using my butt and b) I should be using my butt.
I discovered early this year that this is what was going on, and started a concerted campaign to strengthen my butt muscles and learn how to make use of them, and it is hard hecking work. Those muscles are not strong enough for me to do the normal everyday things that most people use them for. But I can't strengthen them without figuring out how to engage the right muscles for the tasks they ought to be doing, and it's hard to figure out how to engage those muscles if they're not strong enough to do anything useful. So it's a lot of trying things out and having my butt muscles hurting a lot, and having to concentrate very hard on exactly what my body is doing when taking part in normal everyday activities, and failing a lot tbh.
I've been working on this for a LOT of months and it's slow going but incremental progress continues to be made. Standing with good posture is actually still not something that's sustainable for long periods for me, as the correct activation of the correct muscles for that activity does not feel natural yet, but I feel hopeful that someday I will achieve that!
I also physically cannot make functional use of my butt when standing up/sitting down from anything chair height or lower, because that's a lot of mass working against gravity that the butt must support, but I also have hopes that someday I'll be able to do that too, as I continue to strengthen my butt muscles.
What I CAN do with my butt now, as long as I'm paying attention the whole time, and don't do it so much that I exhaust the muscles: run, walk, bicycle, go up and down stairs. This is enormously exciting! Using the butt muscles really does make a small but noticeable improvement in accomplishing these things!
Of course, I have decades of body development and habits to work against as I try to habituate myself to using my butt muscles, and I can still tell that there are nuances to using those muscles effectively that I have not yet gotten the hang of. I'm probably going to have to continue to overthink every time I use my body for anything for at least another couple years, I'm guessing. But it's working! I'm doing it!
And maybe by the end of that I'll be able to just "stand up straight."
This year I've been working really hard on getting my posture figured out, and it's hard but actually achievable it turns out! So what I've determined is that for me to stand up straight, as someone whose body doesn't have muscle memory on how to do that, I have to pay attention to all of the following things:
- unroll my ankles
- feet pointed forward
- feet slightly apart from each other
- knees unlocked, and the one that bends too far backward brought in line with the good one
- tilt my hips the other direction
- butt muscles engaged
- core muscles engaged
- uncurl my back
- shake out my shoulders to help get them situated in a way that my arms hang right
- straighten my neck
- lift my chin
- get head balanced properly over my centre
That's a lot! And I had to basically figure it all out for myself.
But even if I had been given a list like this as a kid, I still would not have been able to achieve sustainably good posture at the time, because I did not know how to engage my butt muscles and it turns out those are vital for good posture.
Here's the thing. Somehow or other, as a wee baby learning as babies do through trial and error how it works to have a body, I apparently never figured out how to make proper use of my butt muscles. As a result, I have spent my whole life compensating for a very weak butt by using weird joint leverage and coopting less-strong muscles to come together to do the job of the butt -- and, crucially, without ever realising that a) I wasn't using my butt and b) I should be using my butt.
I discovered early this year that this is what was going on, and started a concerted campaign to strengthen my butt muscles and learn how to make use of them, and it is hard hecking work. Those muscles are not strong enough for me to do the normal everyday things that most people use them for. But I can't strengthen them without figuring out how to engage the right muscles for the tasks they ought to be doing, and it's hard to figure out how to engage those muscles if they're not strong enough to do anything useful. So it's a lot of trying things out and having my butt muscles hurting a lot, and having to concentrate very hard on exactly what my body is doing when taking part in normal everyday activities, and failing a lot tbh.
I've been working on this for a LOT of months and it's slow going but incremental progress continues to be made. Standing with good posture is actually still not something that's sustainable for long periods for me, as the correct activation of the correct muscles for that activity does not feel natural yet, but I feel hopeful that someday I will achieve that!
I also physically cannot make functional use of my butt when standing up/sitting down from anything chair height or lower, because that's a lot of mass working against gravity that the butt must support, but I also have hopes that someday I'll be able to do that too, as I continue to strengthen my butt muscles.
What I CAN do with my butt now, as long as I'm paying attention the whole time, and don't do it so much that I exhaust the muscles: run, walk, bicycle, go up and down stairs. This is enormously exciting! Using the butt muscles really does make a small but noticeable improvement in accomplishing these things!
Of course, I have decades of body development and habits to work against as I try to habituate myself to using my butt muscles, and I can still tell that there are nuances to using those muscles effectively that I have not yet gotten the hang of. I'm probably going to have to continue to overthink every time I use my body for anything for at least another couple years, I'm guessing. But it's working! I'm doing it!
And maybe by the end of that I'll be able to just "stand up straight."