Fitness trainer Nate Helming from The Run Experience made a video where he talks about head and hip position and how it affects your running. Faulty head and hip position will negatively affect your running performance and can lead to injury just as bad shoulder posture does. Nate shares some good knowledge and tips including:
"Good posture is the key to everything" and "my head, low and behold, is attached to the rest of my spine." Both are things I've taught every client, Egoscue University student, and Posture Alignment Specialist I've worked with over the last 15 years.
Nate talks about how you should not hold your phone while looking at it and you can clearly see this is terrible posture:
"Good posture is the key to everything" and "my head, low and behold, is attached to the rest of my spine." Both are things I've taught every client, Egoscue University student, and Posture Alignment Specialist I've worked with over the last 15 years.
Nate talks about how you should not hold your phone while looking at it and you can clearly see this is terrible posture:
His demonstration of good posture while looking at your phone has the right idea of holding your phone up in front of you so you can look straight ahead and keep your neck more neutral, but his hip posture is terrible! He has swayback posture with his hips in front of his ankles and shoulders which creates damaging stress on the lower back.
Below you can compare good ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, and head alignment and Nate's faulty alignment.
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Nate Helming goes on to talk about how standing as shown below is not a good thing because your body will default to what you teach it all day:
I've written about how bad posture equals bad form and how you stand is how you move and 10 things that cause posture imbalances on my blog that all talk about this topic in detail.
Nate talks about Kelly Starrett (a well known and respected physical therapist, author, and vlogger - who still misses the boat on the importance of posture to pain and performance - who I have discussed on my blog before in my article about the top 10 posture myths) and uses his idea of screwing your feet into the ground and tightening your butt to get yourself into good hip alignment. The problem with this idea is, it just doesn't work. Your body isn't designed to work with femurs in external rotation, pelvis posteriorly tilted, and lumbar spine in flexion, let alone the excessive and restrictive stress that places on the muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, discs, and bones of the body.
If you want to see what good posture looks like, go to a playground and look at children under 8 years old and watch how they stand, sit, and move - that's perfect posture! Notice how their muscles are relaxed and joints are enjoying their full range of motion - things that can't happen when you hold any muscle tight.
Nate then talks about how running with an anterior pelvic tilt is not good or fast. He says, as runner's we should think about "pushing our hips forward" and "letting your hips lead the way." You can see how he shows this below:
Again this could be a good idea not to run with an excessive anterior pelvic tilt, but going into an excessive swayback posture is no better and actually slower!
The best way to guarantee good running posture and improve your running performance and decrease injury risk is to get a full posture alignment analysis from a certified and experienced Posture Alignment Specialist and Advanced Exercise Therapist. They will be able to show you what your dysfunctions and compensations are and how you can correct them with simple e-cises designed just for you. You can receive a FREE Posture Evaluation here.
Related articles/videos:
Too much of a good thing: the top 10 posture myths
10 things that cause posture imbalances and pain
How you stand is how you move
How shoulder posture affects running performance
The best way to guarantee good running posture and improve your running performance and decrease injury risk is to get a full posture alignment analysis from a certified and experienced Posture Alignment Specialist and Advanced Exercise Therapist. They will be able to show you what your dysfunctions and compensations are and how you can correct them with simple e-cises designed just for you. You can receive a FREE Posture Evaluation here.
Related articles/videos:
Too much of a good thing: the top 10 posture myths
10 things that cause posture imbalances and pain
How you stand is how you move
How shoulder posture affects running performance
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