Hard to Find Good Posture Examples
As some of you may know, I was away on vacation in Cancun area for two weeks. While there, I was taking pictures of people at the resort and on the beach. I was trying to find good posture examples. It turned out to be even a harder task than I expected.
I could see plenty of misaligned people and very few good posture examples. The good postures seemed to be still prevalent in babies and little kids. I also was able to catch some good posture examples in people who did simple manual labor at the resort.
Here are the posture examples and postural positions to aspire to:
If a baby develops properly, his/her posture is perfect. We lose this uprightness as we grow. Why? Too much TV, electronic games, computers, and texting. Too little time spent outside playing, running, or jumping.
Look at this girl – her postural alignment is ideal and it looks beautiful and easy:
The hardest part of taking pictures of posture examples was finding adults who managed somehow still have good postures. I was lucky to find a few:
What makes the postures above good? There are several parameters we need to look at. Professional posture evaluation requires pictures taken from front, back, left, and right sides. I want to show you a quick way to evaluate a good posture.
For this, I am going to use pictures from three different angles. For our purpose, the most important will be side and back views.
When a spinal curve is correct and all load joints are aligned, the side view should be similar to a 2nd picture from the left. An imaginary vertical line starting at the ankle should go through the middle of the hip, a shoulder, and an ear.
Although, in our case, the girl was not looking straight but down at the ocean. On the first picture though it is easy to see that her head position is correct. From a side view (both pictures), the girl’s shoulders and her butt are slightly behind the line of her back. She is not posing, she does not even know her picture is taken. This is her natural stance, this is how she holds herself while standing and walking. Beautiful.
An adult woman on the right also managed to preserve very good postural alignment. The same elements are there – shoulders and butt position are similar to the girl’s one. At the same time, she is not swaying, her spinal groove is very even.
Easy To See Bad Posture Examples. Does Your Posture Look Similar To These?
Unfortunately, for each good posture example I found there were hundreds of bad ones. Look at the pictures below:
These are familiar body positions that nobody pays attention to anymore:
- Instead of a straight line going through ankle-knee-hip-shoulder-ear, we see zigzags as in picture 1 and 3.
- Habitual back and shoulder and back rounding.
- Forward head. Look at the guy in picture 4 – I cannot even put my neck that far forward if I tried. And for him it is a normal position. Most likely he does not even realize it.
- Flexing abdominals as in picture 5. This woman is constantly tucking her pelvis under and rounds her upper back while flexing her abdominal muscles. She is effectively changing her spinal position into a C-curve
Do yourself a favor. Stand in front of the big mirror and check your posture sideways. If you look similar to any of the pictures above, you are heading towards dysfunction and pain. To change it, learn more about posture therapy.
Be Healthy. Be Active. Live Pain Free.
Learn here how YOU can restore your posture at my Upright Posture Fitness Studio in Hudson, MA
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