How to Learn to Use Posture Muscles
Your grandmother wasn't wrong: posture is important. Beyond presenting a polite and professional appearance, good posture can help prevent injury and illness. By standing erect, you put the load of your body weight directly on the skeleton and the ground. Bad posture places this load on the muscles. Very bad posture can even lead to organ damage and circulatory problems.
Posture is a habit. If you have poor posture now, you need to train the habit of good posture back into your body. Use the following steps to reteach yourself how to sit and stand properly.
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Instructions
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Remind yourself to sit up. When you sit down or stand, check your posture. In good posture your head is directly above the shoulders, which are directly above the hips, which are directly above the knees, which are directly below the feet.
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Whenever you notice poor posture, correct yourself. Imagine your whole body dangling from a string attached to your crown. Simply remaining in good posture will give the muscles that are responsible for posture a mild workout.
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Replace one chair in your home with an exercise ball. Sitting on an exercise ball requires you to expend extra effort to maintain good posture. If sitting up straight was jogging, this would be jogging with weights on your ankles. Don't overdo this. If your first session lasts through an entire movie, you will be very sore the next morning.
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Consider taking lessons in ballroom dancing, tai chi, martial arts or yoga. All four activities make a point of proper posture. You'll spend time each class with your teacher reminding you to have good posture while thinking about other things.
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Get a good core workout two or three times a week. This can be crunches on your bedroom floor, a group fitness class or sessions with a personal trainer. Work your abs, lower back and oblique abdominal muscles during this session, as those are the muscles most responsible for posture.
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Tips & Warnings
While tracking your progress, consider the four stages of competence. Unconscious incompetence is when you don't even realize you're making mistakes. Most of us start here. The next step is conscious incompetence, where you make mistakes but you realize you're making them. A little practice will bring you to conscious competence, where you do things right when you concentrate. Finally, success comes with unconscious competence, where you're doing things right without having to give them thought.
Keeping these steps in mind, and recognizing them, will help you feel some sense of progress while you're training yourself.
