Three Tips to Improve Posture

Howdy Readers! It has been a busy couple of months and I just finished my second to last semester of graduate school. (Yay!) I am hoping that I can start to get into the habit of rolling out more blog posts but I am not sure how the next semester will go considering that I will begin data collection for my thesis study.

Today's post will be the first step at getting back into the blogging groove and it will be a short and sweet post about posture. Posture is often discussed, known about by everyone but truly ignored by most in practice. Modern society and modern technology has really been a detriment to proper posture and promotes rounded shoulders, forward head posture, excessive kyphosis (hunch back) of the thoracic spine and excessive lordosis of the lumbar spine. None of these thing postural abnormalities are helping you out as an athlete, runner or human.

Poor posture can reduce breathing capacity, contribute to muscle imbalances, decrease power and performance. and result in injury.  To help combat this issue I am going to give you all three simple things that you can incorporate into your daily life to work on improving posture.

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Neck Pain and a Wedding: Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That!

I am back in my hometown for my little sister’s wedding this weekend. Yesterday, my dad spent the day preparing and setting up for the wedding. He was lifting and carrying around a lot of awkward and heavy objects for most of the day. This morning my dad awoke with debilitating neck pain with radiating pain down into his right shoulder. His neck mobility was very poor with limited rotation and side bending to the right.

A year ago, I may have suggested Tylenol, Ice, Rest and perhaps some slight stretching. If I had access to modalities I may have wanted to use electrical stimulation to help control his pain. This was the type of neck pain that would have sent him running to the chiropractor’s office in the past.

Recently, I have been working to incorporate a lot of stuff that I have learned from my OMPT Channel subscription from The Manual Therapist and from the content on his blog as well. If any of you are regular readers of my blog you probably know this little fact already. One of the biggest things that I have learned about is how a large portion of injuries or pain fall into a “rapid response” sort of category. Specifically, this means that there was a good chance that I would be able to make significant and quick changes with my father’s neck pain.

Another concept that I learned and have written about previously is the use of repeated-end range joint loading. This is done into the direction of preference to increase function, centralize pain and improve mobility. This was a concept I used to produce rapid changes in my dad’s neck pain this morning.

Specifically, I did some very light Instrument-Assisted Soft Tisse Mobilization (IASTM) to the right side of my dad’s neck. I followed specific tissue patterns that I learned in the subscription section of the OMPT channel from Dr. Erson but he has some related videos for free on YouTube. I spent 3-4 minutes working these patterns with the goal of helping my dad reach his end-range. After the light tissue IASTM I showed my dad how to do repeated side bending to the right (side of unilateral pain) and cervical retraction as well. I had him do about 2 sets of 12-15 of each of these repeated movements.

Once or twice I had to stop him and help him reach his end-range more effectively. After he finished, the shoulder pain had centralized and his neck rotation and side bending was now normal. These effects are transient so I gave him instructions on how he would need to repeat these exercises for 10-12 reps once a hour. He gave me a look of incredulity but about an hour and a half later while trying on our tuxedos his neck stiffness started to return.

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