Explore expert tips, proven strategies, and inspiring stories to help you move better, feel stronger, and live pain-free.
Healthy posture is much more than sitting or standing tall. It consists of restoring the skeletal mobility that allows you to align your spine in the posture that maximizes load transfer through each spinal segment while providing maximum stability at each segment. For this reason, we refer to healthy posture as neutral spine alignment.
On average, we perform about 100 squats a day. But few of us know how to squat symmetrically. Most of us load the right side of our low backs and as a result we bias to the left knee when we squat. This reinforces faulty loading patterns in our low backs, hips and knees. A simple thing you can do to age healthy is condition yourself to perform symmetrical squats.
You cannot squat your way to healthy aging. Squats allow us to bias toward our stronger hip and knee. This reinforces faulty loading patterns in our low backs, hips and knees. The only way to restore symmetrical loading through your hips and knees is to condition yourself to perform healthy lunges from neutral spine alignment. And perform 2 workouts a week that keeps your lunges healthy.
Planks are an essential exercise in healthy aging. They are the most effective way to strength your upper back to function from healthy posture.When performed from neutral spine alignment they strengthen your ability to break faulty loading patterns in the neck and shoulders.
Little known fact: Sit-ups are not a neutral spine conditioning exercise. They are a core stability exercise but do not strengthen the abdominals in a way that help you maintain neutral spine alignment. Curl-ups on the other hand do help you stabilize your rib cage in a way that promotes healthy spine alignment. Let’s break it down!
Side planks address the asymmetrical loading patterns we develop over time as a result of collapsed upper back and forward head posture. When performed from neutral spine alignment they strengthen your ability to break faulty loading patterns in the neck and shoulders.
