If you’re looking for the secret to good sitting posture and being able to sit pain-free then you need to tune in to this video.
Hi there and welcome back. For those of you who are new I’m Marian Barnick Registered Kinesiologist and Movement Coach, I help people move better and feel better by correcting biomechanics so they can improve their performance.
And what we’re going to cover today is the secret that I tell my clients to pain free sitting.
There was one step to pain-free sitting that is going to give you benefit above all others.
And I’m going to give you the three things that you need to do to implement the secret for pain-free sitting.
And we’re not talking, sitting just in the office.
We’re talking whether it’s in the bus, in the car, whether it’s at church, whether it’s at the kitchen table, sitting.
A big part of a lot of people’s lives. So we want to make sure that we can implement strategies to improve your biomechanics and get you in that position for pain free sitting.
Now you may say, you know what? Everyone has pain. I’m going to put up with the pain.
But I’m going to caution you on that because pain is the way your body’s talking to you.
When there’s pain, there is something wrong and we need to listen to it so it doesn’t turn into injuries.
If we don’t listen to the pain, we won’t be able to fix the issues with just some simple tweaks in your body alignment and biomechanics.
When pain, and then injuries are left too long it can lead to months of treatment, or it even the need surgery.
So listen to the pain and let’s figure out what it’s telling you.
Now, I know it was sitting, people are saying sitting is the new smoking. And I’m going to say BS to that. Sitting doesn’t kill us.
But we do want to change positions.
We don’t want to stay in a sitting position all day, but the majority of people are required to sit for part of the day.
So we do want to make sure that we get our body in alignment so when we sit, we can be pain-free and not put our body at risk for injuries.
So let’s reveal that number one, secret to good sitting posture.
The Secret to Good Sitting Posture
The secret, my friends is the pelvis.
When you have proper positioning of your pelvis, it brings about that pain-free sitting you’ve been dreaming of.
Because the pelvis is what’s instrumental in making sure your upper body and your lower body are in alignment when you’re sitting.
How To Create Proper Pelvis Positioning
Now I’m going to give you those three tips to make sure that you can get the pelvis in the right position while you’re sitting.
Tip Number 1 for Proper Pelvic Alignment
I want you to make sure you’ve got hamstring flexibility. Yep. Those hamstrings are going to affect how your pelvis is positioned.
The hamstrings pull on the pelvis in an angular way.
This is going to shift the pelvis from neutral to a position that’s going to increase that strain on your low back.
So if you have low back pain, when you’re sitting, this is the first step I want you to take for good sitting posture – look at improving your hamstring flexibility.
Now, if you’ve got some issues with your hamstrings, here’s a link to help you with hamstring stretching.
The Best Way to Improve Hamstring Flexibility
This link will help you make sure you’ve got better body alignment when you’re stretching so you get the most out of your efforts to improve mobility.
The last think we want to do is put in all that effort and get nothing out of our time. That’s what happens when you stretch and stretch but you’re not using proper body positioning. You’ll never see the results you want to achieve.
Tip Number 2 for
Good Sitting Posture
The second way to ensure good sitting posture is by working on your core.
You want to make sure once you get your pelvis in the proper position, you can hold that position that’s why you need to work on your core.
Even though we say core strength, it’s not strength. It’s more of an endurance type of activity because once we get the pelvis in that position, once we get our spine in proper alignment, we want those core muscles to be able to hold us in that position.
We don’t want to have to keep thinking about it. That’s automation and neural pathways, and we will be talking about in a future episode. We’re going to focus on the pelvis today.
So we want to make sure the core works well to hold the pelvis in a neutral position.
That’s what’s going to give you good sitting posture as well as keeping you pain-free sitting.
You’re also not going to worry about putting strain on your back, your knees or any other part of your body.
Tight Hip Flexors
Now, that third thing that you need to work on to get the pelvis in that position for good sitting posture is to loosen up those hip flexors.
So those hip flexors can get really tight and they can be our go-to muscles that we look for when we look at moving the upper body or the lower.
The hip flexors are a strong group of muscles and when they get overused, they can get super tight and cranky.
So if we make sure that we loosen up those hip flexors, we can make sure that the pelvis can be in a better position to bring about a good sitting posture as well as decreasing pain and tightness.
Because that’s what we want to achieve:
- proper body alignment to decrease risk of injury
- good sitting posture to decrease pain
- flexibility to allow proper biomechanics when we move
So let’s review those three steps.
The number one secret to good sitting posture is getting the pelvis in the proper position.
And your three ways to do that is with:
- good hamstring flexibility
- getting the core to hold that neutral position
- loosening up those hip flexors
That’s going to bring about our goal, which is pain-free sitting with good sitting posture.
Now in an upcoming episode, we will be talking specifically on hip flexors on getting the sequencing firing properly so you don’t overuse those hip flexors which makes them tight and weak – the worst combination.
If you want to check out the video training for good sitting posture, click the link below and remember to subscribe.
How to Achieve Pain-free Sitting
