The Myth of Knowing

A picture is worth a thousand words…

Taylor Swift is famous for her music,… and her posture. She of course has access to whatever physical training resources available worldwide and yet she continues to exhibit what will inevitably be a very painful body.

One of the things that contribute to the maintenance of this kind of pain-producing posture is the absence of an accurate perception of vertical posture. Often everyone in the room can see that there is gross asymmetry, but the person is unable to see it in the mirror. If this kind of “blindness” can occur in regard to weight in someone struggling with Anorexia or Bulimia, why not in regard to posture.

This is actually a widespread phenomenon.

Here is an old photo of Justin Bieber. Do you think Justin thinks his neck is sore because he hasn’t put enough time in at the gym? I don’t know either, but he might. He might even think his headaches come from his father’s side of the family. It’s hard to say because Justin won’t return my calls 😉

The bottom line is that the posture demonstrated in this picture is wreaking havoc on Justin’s back and neck, and it GUARANTEES bony degeneration over time. The human skeleton is simply not designed to function in that position. It is designed to be able to go into that position, but it’s not healthy for it to take up residence there. My crystal ball foretells that Justin will be suffering from a lot of back and neck problems if he doesn’t get his postural house in order. And NO… a steady diet of push-ups and abdominal crunches will NOT help this situation.

Is the real problem that his glutes “don’t fire”? Lord give me strength, don’t get me started on that topic, please!

I had a new patient in the clinic yesterday. An electrical engineer. A VERY smart guy. He had no idea why he has struggled with upper back, neck, and foot pain for years. It was nice that he didn’t waste any of our time together telling me what the problems were coming from, he didn’t know or pretend to know. The electrical engineer’s posture looked a lot like the photo of Justin shown above.  Both Taylor and Justin appear to stand with their hips too far forward. In this picture of Justin, it is not obvious but in others, I have seen it clearly. 

Once your brain receives information from your nervous system that your hips are hyperextended it will react by pulling your head forward. Your body’s ability to navigate safely in your environment is dramatically impacted by your ability to keep your head on straight (or as straight as you can). So, by pulling your head forward you have minimized losses in your abilities to perceive your environment accurately (i.e. via your eyes and ears and their related functions), but mechanically you have sacrificed a lot. But, from a survival perspective, your body is willing to sacrifice some comfort for smaller losses in function.

The big problem is that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice either.

And over the years those small sacrifices in comfort can turn into BIG costs in comfort AND function. The kind that results in long term pain medication dependence and surgeries. I know this is sounding like a lot of doom and gloom, but I’m just telling you how it is. Do what you will with the info. And just to play Devil’s Advocate for a second… You might say, “Hey Dr. Gloom,… I mean, Geoff”

What about all the people walking around with horrible posture who don’t have any pain?

Yeah,… what about them? There are a ton of factors that contribute to your particular physical experience and posture is just one of them. In fact, a lot of elite athletes probably could not be world champions if they restricted themselves to “perfect posture”.