Pointing at our Posture

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

24 Jun 2006 03:30 PM

We've talked about posture here before. We've talked about listening to our mothers and our grandmothers who told us to sit up straight were doing more than nagging us, they were trying to drill into us a healthy form of behavior that pays off throughout our lifetime. How, do you ask? Well, let me share this little nugget of information with you:

Our good posture is the result of natural skeletal balance that is maintained by muscles strong enough to hold us upright. It is impossible for a person to have good posture and not be relatively fit. Good posture is another reason to understand that your back and abdominal muscles must be flexible and strong enough to support the spine. Practicing good posture as well as exercising regularly to keep your core strong will help you maintain your good posture.

So are you following that?

You need good posture. Good posture promotes good fitness. Exercise promotes good fitness. Good posture and exercise are linked hand-in-hand for positive fitness results.

Keeping Yourself Fit and with Good Posture

Regular weight training is important to help your body to build and preserve your bone density. You put stress on your bones during physical exercise that increase their calcium content. This makes your bones stronger. It makes them denser. It also makes them less prone to injury.

When you perform regular weight bearing exercises such as hiking, aerobics and stair climbing you are working directly with the muscles in your legs that help reduce mineral loss. When mineral loss becomes an issue, there can be compression of the spine and fractures that contribute to back pain and issues with performing every day activities.

Building up the muscles in your back and your abdomen are great ways to not only promote good posture but to benefit from it in performing your every day activities from carrying the baby to walking up the stairs with a bag of groceries.

Some great tools to helping you build up your back and abdominal muscles include:

• Yoga
• Shoulder stretches
• Chest stretches
• Upper back stretches
• Chest flies
• Rhomboid presses

Have you noticed that your posture has improved with exercise?

Related Articles:

Dealing with Hip Pain

A.M. versus P.M. Stretching

Review of Yoga for You and Your Child

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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