According to one Harvard Business School professor and researcher, Amy Cuddy, your posture makes a big difference to your performance in business. If you cross your arms or legs or slouch to make yourself look small, you’ll literally feel small.

If, however, you pose in ways that make you seem larger — chest out, arms and legs open, relaxed — you’ll get a big boost:

You pose powerfully; you perform better; you feel more confident and powerful; then you perform even better. At the same time, people respond to that confidence and performance boost and give you feedback that further elevates your feelings of confidence and power.

So good posture isn’t just good in the short term, it’s also good in the long term. The more you are able to hold your body comfortably in postures of power, the better you feel mentally and physically, the more you reinforce better performance, and the better you feel mentally and physically!

For those really interested in the nuts and bolts and for a few extra insights, read the rest of the article on posture at Inc. Magazine’s website for more on the details of how posture affects your testosterone and cortisol levels.

So let’s talk about the two main points, see just how wrong her advice is on the second point, and see what information you can use to help keep yourself healthy, happy, and pain free:

1.Sitting is bad for you.

• Yes it is.
• It does bad things to your blood, your brain, and the rest of your body.  Muscles atrophy when you sit, fat deposits in your brain and blood, and you end up feeling like crap. The more you sit, the more you find it hard to do other activities until you get to the point where you can’t do other activities. Move around as much as you can. Gretchen recommends getting up once every twenty minutes and walk around for at least two minutes. That sounds good and is an okay start for most people to start breaking sedentary habits.

2. Stretching is pointless and/or bad for you.

• In her interview, she makes it sound like there’s no point to stretching. She claims that your level of flexibility is genetic and that you can’t do much to change it. She then goes on to talk about how her hamstrings have gotten tighter over the years and that that has made her a faster runner.
• Pause for a moment and think about that. If flexibility were purely genetic, why would her hamstrings get tighter? Could it be because she doesn’t stretch? Ask anyone who’s ever done serious stretching, and they will tell you that they have had to hold stretch positions for at least a minute (if not longer) to really feel like their body responds. And they have to do it on a consistent basis to get long term change. This is a basic reality of stretching. This does NOT mean that stretching does not improve flexibility. It means that the kind of stretching most people are doing doesn’t do much to improve flexibility. I typically have people holding stretches for about a minute, and some stretches go on for several minutes.
• She also makes the point that stretching before athletic activities is counterproductive and claims that doing 30 second stretches actually makes your muscles get defensive. Your brain is tricked into thinking you’re about to tear muscles, so defense mechanisms kick in that reduce your performance potential.
• In some ways, this is true. Short 10-30 second stretches are TOO SHORT to do much good and will make your muscles get defensive. In addition, most people you see stretching usually hold stretches for around 5 – 10 seconds, which is even WORSE than a 30 second stretch. But if you stretch your body properly and address your unique muscle imbalances, you can actually help yourself run, walk, swim, etc. more efficiently and with lower chance of injury because your joints are moving correctly. That means your stretches have to be held long enough to create the proper change you’re looking for, and you need to be doing stretches that actually correct imbalances that you have (as opposed to the multitude of quick stretches that exacerbate most athlete’s issues).  I also talk about this in this video on “When is a good time to stretch?” 

If you haven’t listened to Stand Up, Walk Around, Even Just For ’20 Minutes’, I do encourage you to give it a listen, but make sure you listen between the lines and keep the above points in mind! There’s a lot of rightness in the interview, even if her points on stretching aren’t quite as right as they should be.

From the article:

“Posture is really important in how it affects a golf swing,” said Dr Bridge.

“If you are sitting at a desk all day using a computer and a mouse, then your muscles and body get used sitting down, so it will have an effect on your golf swing if you go and play nine holes after work.

“It’s the same for younger players who play on computer games as their arms are locked and tight as a result.

“Posture really impacts on how you swing the golf club…”

Specific, careful training is everything. If you spend 10 hours a day, 5 days a week sitting at a desk and spend only 4 hours tottering around the golf course, is it any wonder you feel like you get worse at golf with every passing year? You’ve got to keep your muscles balanced for activities besides sitting at a desk!

By working on the balance of the muscles that were pulling things out of place, Sue was able to increase her range of motion, release the tension that was causing her pain, and get back to walking the six miles a day she wanted to do.  All it took was the right stretches and exercises to get her body back to the right alignment.

When muscles in the front of your body are too tight and short, you slump and slouch.  When muscles on the right half of your body are too weak to do their jobs, you tend to slant to the left. If muscles of the back of your shoulders and neck don’t do their jobs, you end up with shoulders hiked up to your ears and a head that juts forward.

A quick assessment of your own posture gives you immediate clues to how balanced your muscles are functioning. One shoulder high? One shoulder low? Hips twisted? Head forward? It can be corrected.

You just have to take the time to do it.

I came to Matt Hsu as a last effort to help me with my severe back pain. I have been hospitalized twice due to several blown discs in my lower back. I have tried physical therapy, chiropractors, acupuncture, and massage therapy and nothing helped me for longer than a day. I was on heavy medication several times a day including morphine and muscle relaxers which only took the edge off.

Matt found several postural issues that I had and identified weakness in my legs and ankles. After doing several exercises which Matt designed specifically for my issues and paying more attention to my posture and lifting techniques, I am virtually pain free and am almost entirely off of any pain medication. Matt has changed my life.

~Tommy P. HVAC technician

Since opening Upright Health in San Diego in 2009, I’ve noticed a number of San Diego’s medical personnel coming through the doors. It seems like age and specialty don’t really matter. I’ve seen internists, med students, x-ray techs, nurses, laproscopic surgeons, cadiovascular perfusionists, radiation oncologists, physical therapists and executive level officers come in looking for ways to improve their posture and beat their pain.

For example, the surgeons often have asymmetries related to the positions they sit in for 6 hours at a time and the attendant shoulder/neck/back strain, and the docs and nurses have ailments running the gamut from shoulder/neck/back strain to knee, hip, and ankle pain and instability from sitting, standing, or running around for twelve hour marathon shifts. Often, they’ve already gone through various other treatments to try to nix their pain, but they keep coming back to the idea that their muscles are just not balanced properly from all the repetitive motions they’re doing. It just feels like the right answer!

There’s just one hitch. The medical world operates relies on evidence-based decisions (which is a good thing!), so it’s quite common for an idea as elegantly simple and unique as “fix the posture and fix the pain” to elicit a little skepticism. Sometimes they find it hard to believe that the answer that feels right is right.  Since posture alignment specialists like me don’t have any double-blind placebo studies or large scale prospective studies to point to, making the leap to come in to Upright Health can be a bit daunting.

Part of the problem is that proper scientific research is both difficult to organize and extremely expensive to do right.  Since there are so few of us out there, it’s tough to get a large scale study going that would be of any scientific validity. But what we can do is share anecdotes and case studies to help shed a little light on what we do so that people can get a sense of how sensible, logical, and to the point posture alignment therapy is. Obviously this isn’t the highest level of scientific validity, but it’ll have to do for now until someone wants to help setup and fund a study!

Until that happens, I wanted to share one of my clients’ stories (name has been anonymized for privacy):

With my training as a nurse, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of “alternative therapies.” So, when I began experiencing walking/gait issues, impacting my ability to hike, row, swim, bike and get around, I went the traditional route with scans, physical therapy, and offers of muscle relaxants and pain medications (I didn’t pursue the drugs). They didn’t work. By the time I hobbled to my 1st appointment with Matt, I was walking with a cane and sleeping at night in one position, propped by 10 pillows.Quite honestly, the visit to Matt was out of desperation because I was willing to try anything to regain my independence.

After my 1st session, I was cane-free. About 5 weeks later, I was back in my scull and rowing again…hiking and swimming, too. This is the absolute truth and not a “paid promotional.”

I’ve never written a testimonial before and I never thought I’d be endorsing something outside of mainstream medicine. But, I believe in Matt…I’ve experienced the results 1st hand. Plus, the approach at Upright Health is different than what’s offered elsewhere in the community and the right one, if you consider physiology.

If you’re reading this testimonial, it’s probably because you’re not sure what to do and/or you’re willing to try anything at this point. I encourage you to make the call. The results are real. You can trust Matt. I’ve shared his contact information with physicians I know so they can refer their patients. If you continue to have hesitations, all I can say is it’s a “Nike thing”…….”Just do it.” You won’t regret it.”

DB, Healthcare Executive

Share this story with a doctor, surgeon, nurse, technician or med student (did I miss anyone?) you know who’s hurting. They need to hear that posture does matter and that some well-done analysis on how to retrain the body can make a huge difference!

Get these out of your medicine cabinet.

This is a quick public service announcement unrelated to posture…

If you or someone you know is taking Bi Yan Pian, please read this bulletin from Health Canada about excessive amounts of mercury in the pills.

I found out first-hand about the side effects, and they weren’t pretty!

With that in mind, one mental technique I use for myself and with clients is one that I’m sure has a fancy name in sports psychology (but I don’t know what it is).  So let’s call it the “mental rewind technique that helps you keep making progress in everything you do.” Or maybe just “mental rewind” for short.

I saw a client the other day who I started working with almost exactly a year ago. She’s been exceptionally busy over the last year spearheading the turnaround of a large organization, but she’s managed to spend long days in high heels running from meeting to meeting, monitoring situations and putting out fires. She’s got a little bit of discomfort now and then, but she manages to keep at her very important work with minimal complaints from her body now. That may sound like nothing special, but it is/was a big deal to her when we took a moment to use the “mental rewind.”

One year ago, she was hobbling with the assistance of a cane, and wearing heels of ANY height spelled absolute physical doom.

Think she’s motivated to keep moving her body in the right direction now that she sees how far she’s come? Yup!

When I use the mental rewind for myself, I often think back to when I was 25 and found I could not wear hockey skates anymore.  No matter what kinds of insoles I used, no matter how tightly I tied my laces, no matter if I tried a different pair of skates, skates would kill my ankles and feel miserable for my arches. My feet and ankles hurt pretty much all day no matter what kinds of shoes I wore, so it was not all that surprising that my skates would be so painful.

What is surprising is that at 30, I now wear skates several hours every week on the ice without any pain in my feet or ankles (except for the friction callouses that all hockey players know!).

Am I motivated to keep pushing my body to higher and higher heights? You bet!

No matter what you’re doing, it can be helpful to pause, reflect on how far you’ve come, and celebrate the victories you’ve already won by doing whatever it is you’re doing. Use the “mental rewind” when you feel like you’re hitting a block, and use your victories as the wind in your sails! Ask yourself:

• Am I better off now than I was [6 months ago, 1 year ago, 2 years ago, 5 years ago]? AND/OR
• What can I do now that I couldn’t before?

If you’d like to share an inspiring “mental rewind,” post it below in the comments! It’s an open invitation to all those who are fighting against pain or pushing toward some other special goal: what can you do today that you couldn’t before?

These days, it doesn’t seem that way at all. At least not to me.  I’ve seen countless people in their 20s and 30s come in the door with major balance issues. And I’ve had people in their 70s come in with fabulous balance. So I don’t think it has so much to do with age as it does with something one 75-year-old client has taught me.

The older you get, the more you have to do to maintain your body.  

And it’s not JUST because you’re getting older. It’s because our lives have also gotten more sedentary. We sit and sit and sit and don’t realize what an effect it has on our bodies. Luckily, we’re starting to wake up to the problem and acknowledge that it is a problem. So you have age, which means you gotta do more to keep your body feeling good, AND you have your lifestyle working against you.

So what’s the way to combat worsening balance? Well, you can’t reverse time (there’s not an app for that yet), but you can do one thing that will help you FEEL younger.

Move! Move your body intelligently and in ways that re-awaken the right muscles the right way. That doesn’t mean you should end your workday by doing a five hundred pound leg press. It means challenging your body gently and effectively constantly.

One quick thing you can do after a long period of sitting is balance on one leg. Just get out of your chair, stand near a wall or desk, then pick up one leg and try to balance for a minute. Switch legs. See what happens. It’s not as easy as it sounds. You may find you can’t even do it for 15 seconds.  You’ll also find that it’s going to be MUCH harder at the end of a long period of sitting since the hip stabilizers often get shut down by long periods of sitting.  This little exercise throughout the day can help improve your balance and reawaken some of those poor hip muscles that you squash all day long in your office chair. Give it a shot and see what happens! As your body’s balance improves you’ll be surprised at how much younger you start to feel.