4. Body Mechanics
Alright, so we’ve covered the importance of hydration, the benefits of breath control, the application of range of motion, and now we’re here to build on that foundation by talking about body mechanics, or posture through movement.
When a person feels a twinge of pain after some kind of activity, it’s usually due to improper body mechanics. A majority of the time the activity is something that the person has repeated many many times and more likely than not the pain occurs in the spine or alongside it. I have personally experienced this too many times to count. It’s come in the form of “tweaking” my low back after sweeping, coming back up from bending over, or coughing forcefully. A longstanding body mechanical issue in my “pelvic posture” showed up as underdeveloped and atrophied glute muscles, a slumped posture, knee valgus (knees biased toward the midline) and flat feet, all lending to foot pains, knee pains, sacral pains, low back pains, and neck pains. All at the ripe old age of 23.
When I fixed my attention to developing good body mechanics through the simple activity of walking up two flights of stairs very slowly and mindfully every day, actively working to feel my glutes with every step, I was able to see results in my muscle growth within two weeks and structural changes within a month. My flat feet went away, my booty was finally not nonexistent, and my low back stopped “going out” on schedule every other month.
Getting to that point where you’re able to say that having good posture through movement has helped to eradicate a recurring pain that you’ve come to expect on a regular schedule does require discipline, as do all 3 steps of preventive maintenance that we’ve learned so far, but the discipline requires such little effort. The primary effort that a person is to give with any of these four foundational habits is mindfulness. I like to call it “obsession.” We don’t see the level of change that sticks until we buy into the habit wholeheartedly, believing that incorporating it into our lives is THE next best step, not just A next possible step. And habits really don’t require any more discipline than the amount of time it takes to become obsessed. Once you’ve become obsessed, the results show up soon after, and before you know it, obsession is no longer required. Just a background level of awareness going forward. Habit established.
With body mechanics the stakes are high. Especially in this day and age where everyone from their first year on has a screen in front of them, and not “at or above eye level” as an ergonomics specialist would recommend. The adults that struggle the most with chronic pain from terrible body mechanics are the people whose professions require constant awkward positions. Hairstylists, dentists, surgeons, artists and illustrators, jobs that require a lot of drive time, among SO many others, really have their daily habits working against the design of their bodies. It becomes that much more important for people with these types of professions to really follow through on all four of these preventive maintenance steps to help un-program and re-program their tissues into developing in a way that supports the person’s well-being and not just their working life. Otherwise, we become the “turtle people” that might as well have a shell on their back. Chronically hunched over so badly that in order to look forward they have to strain to crank their neck back as far as they can. We have plenty of examples of what a lifetime of not being mindful of our physiological needs does to us from the older folks around us. Thanks to so many people’s dedication to constantly ignoring their aches and pains, we now have an idea as to how things can turn out for any of us that repeat those life choice patterns. These preventive maintenance habits are what the 70 year olds that are still playing tennis have in common, and what those same 70 year olds have at odds with the other 70 year olds that are stuck with walkers, canes, and hunchbacks.
If you have the desire to become strong, even if you’ve never really been able to identify as a physically strong person at any time in your life prior (like me), developing solid body mechanics is most definitely the answer to the question “where do I start?” If strength gains don’t really inspire you, I bet that getting rid of a nagging pain motivates you. Either way, great body mechanics is your ticket to developing a great relationship with your “corporeal structure” so you can identify the reasons as to WHY you experience pain when you do. These four steps to preventive maintenance work together to give you actionable steps with the absolute least mental and physical effort applied while yielding the greatest returns on the attention that you invest into them.
Okay, action time.
The How-To:
Step 1 — Posture! It’s not so much as pulling the shoulders back and down like you hear. Too many people get caught up in holding contractions in the accessory muscles of the shoulder girdle instead of aligning their vertebraes in a stacked position by using spinal muscles. Concentrate on lifting your breastbone to point up and out like your favorite superhero, and work on practicing balancing the head so that the neck isn’t craning forward to hold the head against gravity. Babies do this naturally when they learn to walk. They have no choice but to balance their macrocephalus (big head) on top of their precious and fragile little neck to be able to pull off the stunt that they see everyone else doing so easily.
Step 2 — If your spine has been hunched for too many years and you literally can’t hold the vertebraes stacked without a lot of pain in the spinal muscles, there’s still hope. There’s also more work for you. Do the thing that babies do before they learn how to walk. They spend a lot of their time belly down on the ground looking up at the world, often lifting their chest off the ground and doing what we would call a “superman” type exercise. Practice this. the first time is always the worst time. Every attempt going forward is easier than the last. The easier it becomes means the more imminent your success at spinal neutrality and vertebral stacking.
Step 3 — Practice “bodybuilder” posture for short periods of time throughout the day, flexing your legs and back, especially before you bend over to grab something. Head up, straight spine, booty out, weight in your heels, perfect squat mechanics. If you have a baby at home, they’re also known for pulling this off like a boss. Why? Because they’re built to be masters of posture from day one. As we grow into lankier versions from our original big-headed baby state, we begin to notice the nuances of posture and learn to emulate those aspects for various reasons. Those reasons may be to blend in and not stand out, to look like all the cool kids, to not be a sexual target, too many reasons to count why “bad” posture is so prevalent. For me, it was my fear of being misconstrued as gay. All the flamboyant boys had the best posture. I didn’t want that title, so my body and self-esteem suffered for years, which also meant my chances with the ladies suffered in proportion. Super ironic I know.
So the overall lesson is when in doubt, act like a baby that just learned how to walk the past couple months. They seem to have a lock on this whole “body mechanics” hullabaloo.
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