How to improve slouching?

2013-12-24

Generally, patients with kyphosis will have symptoms of neck pain and back pain. Most of them know that they are slouching, but the biggest problem is that they don't know how to change the bad habit slouching and correct the posture, and they don't know why they can't control the back to become straight.

In fact, to completely improve slouching, it is not just a matter of straightening your back. This is because the neck and upper back muscles are overworked due to working with the head down for a long time. Therefore, the problem of back muscle strain must be improved, and upper back stretching and strengthening exercises must be performed to truly correct slouching.

Physiological curvature of the spine

Looking at our spine from the side, both the cervical and lumbar spine have proper lordotic curvature, and the thoracic spine is slightly kyphotic. However, patients with “kyphosis" refer to the increased degree of thoracic kyphosis, causing the upper back to fall back. Severe head protruding, head tilted forward, shoulders forward.

Kyphotic patients

The patients with “kyphosis" include students and clerical staff who often use computers. Because they often bending their heads down for work or reading, they are in bad postures for long periods of time, with their heads stretched forward and their upper backs bent. (Picture 2) Incorrect working posture, which makes the back muscles and tendons become more tense and stiff. After a long period of time, a slouching posture is formed, and the muscles, tendons are also tight and stiff to cause muscle pain.

Correct Kyphosis: Improve your posture

To effectively deal with the problem of slouching, we must first treat the strain of the shoulder and neck muscles. Then correct the posture of the slouching and do exercises to strengthen the neck and back muscles.

1）Correct your sitting posture

We should sit on the work chair with the lower back leaning to the back of the chair. If you find that your back can't entirely lean to the back of the chair, find a good back support cushion and put it behind the chair to support your lower back. Regularly pay attention to whether your head, neck and upper back are leaning forward, so that your shoulder and hip joints form a straight line.

2）Standing posture

When standing and walking, pay attention to the posture of raising your head, sticking your chest out, and tighten your abdomen. Self-correcting posture exercises can be done as follows: stand against a wall, put your shoulders and head pillows against the wall, retract your chin and relax, repeat the exercise, unlimited times.

Simple upper back relaxing exercise

If you sit and work for a long time, you should do some simple upper back relaxation exercises every 30 to 45 minutes to avoid maintaining the same posture for a long time.