They are quick and easy to perform and surprisingly effective. After 20 of them I fell my back and neck muscles kind of "activated". They wont fix everything but they are a good immediate action and will also make you more aware of your posture and muscles.
I'd advice doing whole body training though, rather than focusing on posture only.
I've tried a posture brace before. It helps to remind you to straighten up, but it didn't feel like a permanent solution. I eventually went back to bad posture when I stopped using it.
...at least once this whole virus situation clears up. In the meantime, maybe farmer carries with heavy book bags or somesuch? If you're not in proper posture it will hurt, but correct form will challenge your grip strength more than your back. Planks are also wonderful for building up the strength to keep good posture.
Farmer carry demo: https://youtu.be/cBv3NcxqhPM
Your feet are pushing into the floor, your knees are pushing into the tops of your tibias. Hips, ribs, vertebra, head. When you feel the downward pressure on your skeleton it means your muscles are pulling you up. Like a circus tent pole surrounded by guy wires, you're in a perfect balance between tension and compression.
I don't know if there's one weird trick for it. Ice skating helps you develop the feel.
1. Fix the underlying ergonomics. Put your monitor higher and your keyboard closer. The position you want is like the rest position of a dancer: elbows nearly against your sides, relaxed. (Taking an actual dance class will teach a lot about posture habits). A small change of a few degrees here and there can make a big difference. If you are a laptop user and have been actually resting it on your lap, try putting a shoebox or similarly sized object under it.
2. Train mobility. The hunch develops as a result of persistent overtraining in one direction. You don't need a lot of additional strength to start to correct this, just mobility.
Look up Youtube channel "Calisthenic Movement" - there are some very good mobility routines and I have incorporated parts of them into my everyday workout. Some of them use a pull-up bar but most are pure bodyweight and the floor or a wall.
If you want to stock a home gym I suggest going for resistance bands - they're small, light, cheap, more forgiving than weights and hugely versatile.
This is so essential to a reasonable posture that it's essentially required by workplace safety regulations in Europe. (In other words, in Europe your employer should buy these things, including for working at home.)
Try this: https://hundredpushups.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Posture-Corrector-Men-Women-Truweo/dp...
Have you tried it yourself? Not doubting, just always have some skepticism of reviews on Amazon haha
You also need to do strength training.
Also...I'm skeptical about these as I've heard they train your muscles to be lazy – the brace does lots of the work, so when you take it off old habits kick in because you're muscles can't do the same job the brace was doing.
But I guess the limit of 20–60 mins a day is to prevent that?
It's a little device that you stick on your upper back and connect to your phone via Bluetooth. It detects when you're slouching and buzzes your back with a slight vibration to remind you to sit up straight.
Simplified, the anterior muscle chain (muscles along the front of your body) are over activated and are not working in balance with your posterior chain. The muscles in front are shorter and stronger. In back they are weaker and elongated. This especially in hunched forward posture and neck tension.
The muscles in front also work harder to hold your body upright as you are probably used to 'thinking' with the front of your body. Instead of being evenly balanced and distributed properly from the hips and up through the spine.
This is a simplification and each muscle in the body tends to have complementary and opposing muscles. Each individual will manifest problems in different areas and require strengthening and stretching accordingly.
My current physio has a Pilates studio and focuses on strengthening and stretching tailored to me. Not cheap but for me it has helped to identify and rethink how I move in an intuitive movement focused manner. 60 per week for an hour session so not prohibitive.
Also Alot of problems tend to have issues rooted in the glutes and hip flexors, I.e. an imbalance down there at the body's structural core manifest up through the spinal and muscle chain. This being the case with me I do a lot of glute work and hip flexor work as well as upper and lower back strengthening etc.
Eventually going to a gym or something similar being the goal, i suggest to start with a good excercise based physio, ones who do Pilates seem to have the right science & body mechanics approaches, to establish good form (which can be quite non intuitive if you have under active and over active muscles).. starting out at the gym may be overreaching and may compound imbalances... a good instructor may help but start at the physio imho.
Good luck!
I forget where I learned it, so unfortunately I can't provide professional guided advice, but I saw an article about sitting better and making sure your hips aren't too far forward or back. It took some getting used to as I had been sitting poorly for years. I needed time for certain things to stretch a bit so that it became natural, but now I've even had compliments on my posture while sitting.
Getting a split keyboard helped too. Being able to spread the two halves prevented my shoulders from pinching together in the front.
A new study suggests that sitting upright for hours at a time -- for example, when working at a computer -- may lead to chronic back pain. Instead, the best position for your back is somewhat reclined, sitting at a 135-degree angle rather than the 90-degree angle most office chairs are designed for.
https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/news/20061129/back-pain-ease...
I'll throw out something that helped me - strengthening my upper back. My upper back was weak and not doing it's job which was causing my lower back to suffer.
All those ergonomic solutions force you to position yourself well, but they won’t work unless you have the strength to hold it.
I've been prescribed adderall before (I basically asked for it), and it was good, but I've cut it out since I don't like what it did to my personality.
Maybe what you want is a way to maintain focus — not necessarily hold still. Don’t mean to be patronizing; I’m trying to change my habits to move around more.
I'll probably request one from work once we return to the office.
https://www.sciencealert.com/hunter-gatherers-are-as-sedenta...
This book fixed my posture. After reading it, I understood for the first time what it actually means to have good posture.
Don't do a bunch of reps, just 5-10 or whatever is comfortable, every couple hours.
My strong suggestion is raise your desk to 36 to 42 inches and buy a good quality lab stool with a foot rest. A stool forces your to sit upright and not slouch.