Bad habits create movement problems.  Movement problems cause breakdown and back pain.  The absolute worst habit for your low back is sitting. I know, we talked about this already. But even worse than sitting is sitting with bad posture. Let’s be realistic, sitting these days is inevitable. But even if you’re alternating sitting and standing, if your posture sucks it is a sure way to develop lower back pain. Habit #1 to fix is your posture.

Here’s how….

1.      Find a posture expert, preferably a chiropractic posture expert.  A chiropractic posture expert will help you correct old spinal damage that will allow you to create new better habits. Whether you’re an athlete, desk jockey, or homemaker everyone needs to learn good posture habits and learn to keep their spine and nervous systems healthy. 

2.     When sitting, keep your shoulders back by engaging your middle back and keep your lower back curve intact by sitting upright.  To find this posture externally rotate your arms while they are at your sides. You should feel a slight engagement between your shoulder blades. Now relax your arms by your sides but keep that slight engagement in your mid back.  By doing this you will automatically sit upright to keep that vital curve in your lower back also. This will feel weird for a while, but the more your practice this habit the more it will become automatic.

3.     When standing, maintain the same upper body posture with the arm external rotation trick.  Now for your lower body posture all you really need to do is turn on your butt. Just a light squeeze is all you need.  By doing this you will keep your pelvis locked in underneath your spine and keep your core engaged to protect your lower back.

Once you’ve fixed your posture, the next habit that will bullet proof your lower back from pain is practicing weekly breathing and posture strengthening shapes.  For myself, one of the best ways to train both at the same time is with yoga.  Yoga will help teach you how to take deep breaths into your lungs and minimize your shallow stressful breathing.  This helps lower stress, saturate your blood with vital oxygen, and support healing.  The physical practice of yoga will help wring out stress in your spine, strengthen postural and spinal muscles, and challenge flexibility. 

Once per week, the fitness center at In8 Wellness Center Center has a yoga class on Monday nights at 6:30 pm that we offer to the entire community for a small drop-in fee.  We include this class for our members as a benefit in their monthly memberships.  Our daily workouts also include posture-prep warmups that that help strengthen important muscles that are often ignored in traditional personal training programs.

Is your posture a disaster or are you not sure if you’re posture is on point or not?  Schedule a wellness score at In8 Wellness Center that includes a comprehensive posture assessment and functional movement screening with Dr. Ryan. As a thank you for reading this blog just mention that you read about how to bullet-proof your low back and you will receive our referral discount of $49 instead of $249.