TruBlog

by Craig Morgan

We’ve all had someone in our lives tell us to, “Stand up straight!!” But, besides being yelled at for looking like a slouch, most of us have no idea why posture really matters. In spite of the temptation to be really technical and talk about muscle length-tension relationships and neuromuscular efficiency……I’ll just stop there and give it to you in terms that you care about.

(1)Your posture is a reflection of your muscle balance, and without muscle balance you are not getting the most out of your workouts. If I am doing a pulling movement and the front side of my upper body is tight, it is impossible for me to fully engage my pulling muscles, thereby not fully achieving the muscle engagement and subsequent breakdown of the area I am trying to work. This has a negative impact on my training results as muscle breakdown and regrowth fuels body change.

(2) Your postural alignment is a reflection of the quality of your movement, and without quality movement you are leading yourself towards an injury condition. Staying with the pulling example, if the front side of your upper body is tight and your shoulder is pulled forward, then the back side of your shoulder is excessively lengthened and weakened. This alters the joint mechanics whenever you do any upper body exercise, and when joint mechanics are altered, there are certain muscles doing too much work at the joint and others not doing enough. When muscles constantly do more work then they are supposed to, they further tighten bringing the joint further out of alignment. The resulting joint misalignment over time leads to many of the “itises” such as tendonitis, bursitis, arthritis, etc.

As a san diego personal trainer, I have seen countless individuals suffering from injuries that are completely unnecessary. Take the time to learn proper exercise form and program design, because as we all know, if you are hurt you are not going to exercise, and exercise is a key pillar of preventative health.

Tags: Functional Exercise, Healthy Weight Loss, Optimum Health, San Diego Personal Trainer

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 9:45 am and is filed under Healthy Weight Loss, Optimal Health, Personal Training, Proper Techniques, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.