Introduction to Correct Posture and Standing Techniques: Part 1

With this article I intend to explain first more about human anatomy and how to strengthen muscles to prevent the most common problem with factory employees but also in retail, guard duty and any other profession with lots of stationary standing will benefit from this.

The second article will be more about how to achieve (standing) posture, feet anatomy and risk factors and complications from standing still so keep an eye out for that. It can be a little bit technical but on internet a lot of examples can be found and this is just a few pointers to get you started.

1) Physiology: the blood in our body is pumped around by the heart but for the lower extremities (legs) the muscles actually have to help out the heart because the blood in the legs has to be pumped up against gravity. These muscles however do not work on their own and need to be activated (moving or flexing).

So when standing still the muscles is not activated and the heart can’t pump all the blood up from the legs fast enough. Now the blood will start collecting in the feet and legs and create that “heavy feeling”. What comes next is a chain reaction of compensation to get more comfortable but each of them will create a different problem and it can start with the feet but end up giving complaints in the neck.

2) Anatomy: the human body is by nature not designed to stand upright so in order for us to remain upright our muscles are working NON STOP to prevent us from falling over.
Especially the m. Erector spine (that long cable like muscle on our back along our spine) works alot so if it gets tired we start to assume a posture to relax that muscle.
Mostly we refer it to as “slouching” and it means we arch our lower backs and tilt our pelvis so we hang in our abs. This might relax the muscle but puts a lot of stress on the spine and other muscles now have to compensate.

In order to prevent this from happening there are two most important solutions:
1.STRENGTHEN CORE MUSCLES!! (abdominals, obliques, Latissimus Dorsi or Lats are most important)

A technique I will explain more in second article is to slightly bend the knees when standing so that the pelvis cannot tilt and the lower back cannot be arched. This is a static posture though because walking is impossible like that.

2.AWARENESS is most important and the abs need to be activated AT ALL TIMES when standing so that the back will remain straight (this is not tightening it to the max because that’s impossible to maintain all day)

Exercises that can be done:

Abs:
– Crunches/situps
– sit ups with rotation for obliques (criss/cross sit ups) (start with 3×10 with 2 minutes rest and increase with 5 reps when it
becomes too easy)
– lying on back and straighten legs and hold in air (3×30 seconds with 45 seconds rest)
– lying on back and cycling with legs (3×30 with both legs)
– lying on back and “suck in” the bellybutton (3×30 with 30 sec rest)