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Having a good posture makes a huge difference to your body language and the way that you come across. There are several posture correction products on the market that claim how they can help you. However, you can actually improve your posture significantly with the right type of exercises and muscle activation.
If you have poor posture, it’s likely that:
- You’re slouching when you are sitting
- You are rotating your shoulders forward instead of backwards.
- Your muscles are relaxing to put your body into a position where your posture is poor.
- Your muscles are contracting when they shouldn’t be.
You want to be conscious of how your body is. You need to look in the mirror and be honest with how you look. You can then focus on the exercises that you need to perform to correct your posture.
Muscle groups to focus on.
- Core/Abdominals
- Shoulders
- Back
- Glutes
- Quads
- Chest
Core/Abdominals
If this area is weak, it will cause you to have a pelvic tilt which will rotate your core forward and cause you to have an arch in your back. It’s actually challenging to pull your hips forward if you aren’t aware of this. And worse, sometimes it’s being pulled by other muscle groups such as the hip flexors.
You need to ensure that your hip flexors are stretched well. You can do this by doing lunges.
You can also do exercises such as leg raises, oblique crunches, and knee raises to improve your core strength.
Also doing squats will help to strengthen the stablising muscles in your core.
Chest and Shoulders
Your shoulders will rotate forward especially if you are doing office work. So you can do the bench press (flat and incline) along with shoulder raises and shoulder press to correct the posture in your upper body.
Back
You can easily correct your back posture by doing rows. Barbell or dumbbell rows, and pull ups will all help you correct your posture.
Quads and glutes
The muscles in these areas can often pull other muscles, causing your posture to shift. Check to make sure the muscles aren’t tight and if they are, try to stretch them so that they become relaxed.
Also, conduct exercises that will help with the mobility of those muscle groups. Squats, reverse lunges, deadlifts, and hip thrusts are great exercises that will help you activate those muscles, which will help you correct your posture.
If you spend a good portion of your day sitting, you should seriously consider investing in an ergonomic chair to make sure that your muscles are supported.
Also look into ergonomic workstations that will be ideal for your setup at work or even at home.
