Better Posture — Pain Prevention

Post in collaboration with How to Bulk Muscle

Even if you don’t typically do the motions described in our previous posts, you can still experience back and shoulder discomfort, pain or even run into serious problems with your muscles and joints.

As we’ll be exploring throughout much of the rest of this article, many of your back muscles are postural muscles. That means that misalignments in your body can cause discomforts in your back muscles and that mismanaging your back muscles can cause severe problems with your bones.

If you are a weightlifter who targets some muscle groups more than others, or a frontline worker that does the same sort of motion day in and day out you may be developing some muscle groups more than others. This can pull your bones out of alignment and damage your joints.

One solution can be making sure to work out muscle groups that you may have been ignoring or that might not be as activated while you work. You may also want to consider incorporating more full-body exercises that work out multiple muscle groups at the same time. These exercises can prevent back and shoulder problems, but they’re also the best at fat burning.

Depending on the problem, wearing a back support while you work or work out can also help to protect your posture so that your muscles and joints don’t take so much wear-and-tear.

Back and shoulder pain can mean a lot of things. However, one of the most common culprits is overuse or strain of the rotator cuff.

The rotator cuff is a ring of muscles surrounding each shoulder joint. They’re responsible for giving the shoulders their impressive multi-directional range-of-motion. However, they are also very delicate.

Many people who have overuse injuries of the rotator cuff are athletes who often make arm motions above their heads, like pitchers and quarterbacks. However, people with physically demanding jobs like stockers and construction workers can also have these problems. Further, acute issues like sprains and strains can also impact these muscles.

A recurring theme throughout this article - and our website - is that overuse and damage can be prevented through careful strengthening and toning of the muscle groups. The muscles of the rotator cuff are no different, and strengthening your shoulders can help reduce pain.

The bad news is that they can be difficult to target effectively. The good news is that the muscles of the chest and back do most of the heavy lifting. As a result, familiarizing yourself with exercises to develop the back and chest can help to make these injuries less likely.

Power Squats are another way to work on strengthening your lower back muscles. Proper Squat form is key to avoid back pain.

Here is proper Squatting posture technique we learned from Stronglifts:

– Stand with the bar on your upper-back, and your feet shoulder-width apart.

– Squat down by pushing your knees to the side while moving the hips back.

– Break parallel by Squatting down until your hips are lower than your knees.

– Squat back up while keeping your knees out and chest up.

– Stand with your hips and knees locked at the top.

Most likely, you are reading this sitting down, and possibly in front of your desktop computer.

Back pain is such a typical part of life, people may think it is almost normal. About four in five people will suffer from lower back pain at some point in their lives. Herniated discs, strained muscles, and bad posture are the typical causes. People are more likely to miss work as a result of a sore back and it is a major reason people claim a job-related disability. Back pain ranges from minor to very serious and can feel very differently from one person to the next. Since it is so common, many people fail to take it seriously until the pain becomes an obstacle they cannot overcome.

The home and office environment are notorious for making back pain hard to manage or prevent. Changing the sleeping, sitting, or working spaces to accommodate a better ergonomic environment may be the only way people can continue to function. This requires research and close attention to the places where people spend most of their time. By making changes to the room and developing healthy habits, people can stop back pain from turning into a problem they cannot handle.

Home Office and Workspace Modifications for Back Pain

People thought shifting the primary means of work from a factory to an office would be easier on the body. However, decades of experience has shown the office environment can be as hard on a person’s back as fields requiring a lot of physical labor. Years of repetitive stress from sitting in an uncomfortable position can cause a lot of damage.

Start by evaluating your home work space. Take a look around and notice areas where clutter piles up, dim lighting or darks spaces. Notice the shape of the furniture you use while working, does it look to be design for support and comfort, or around home decorative trends? Pay close attention to the material it is made of, does it have a balance of structural support with cushion or padding?

All of these factors play a role on your mood, energy level, and amount of focus impacting your sitting posture.

People may spend as much time in the office as they do sleeping in bed, and in some cases more than that. This underscores the need to have a supportive work environment with a chair ideally set up for a person’s back. A few modifications to the chair and desk may make a significant difference in a person’s ability to function while they work. We’ll take a good look at your chair in a following post.

Helpful Habits in the Workplace

One of the biggest problems with back pain caused by a bad work environment is it tends to accumulate slowly. This means people may not notice they are causing back pain or injury from bad posture until it becomes quite pronounced. Most people expect to have a little discomfort after a long day at the office, and this can lead them to ignore signs of back problems on the horizon. It does not take a lot of work for people to identify what they may be doing wrong and form a plan to correct it. Understanding what it means to have a good posture makes it easier for people to develop a habit. Once they have this information, they can put it into practice in a way to ensure they will continue to have better muscle and joint health over time.

For additional tips on home modifications read the guide from Kris Lindahl Real Estate : https://www.krislindahl.com/back-pain-management-guide.php

Next, we’ll look at bad posture from sitting all day and how improper fit of your computer chair can lead to back pain.

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