When the Posture Professional has the Posture Problem

You’ve done it, you’re a NPI-Certified Posture Specialist and you work with clients on a regular basis. You don’t miss a beat, every time you see someone in poor posture or practicing exercise movements incorrectly you’re able to approach, assess, and offer the necessary corrections. Look at you go, you’re changing the world one spine at a time.

One day you’re performing your regular activities and you feel something in your neck. It’s nothing, it’ll go away. You shake it off and continue until a few days or maybe even weeks later you really start to feel it. It can’t be; it’s not possible that you’d have neck pain. What’s more is you’re feeling it in your upper back area too. You know what’s happening but you start writing it off as just an isolated incident. It must have been the exercises you did last week maybe you just need a break.

The story continues with you hanging your head over to do some mundane task and your traps, neck, and shoulders start screaming. What is this? How could you, the posture professional, have a posture related problem like this when you’re the one who’s been correcting everyone else’s posture? Thoughts start creeping in. Maybe you didn’t learn it all, maybe there’s more and you just didn’t pay attention or maybe you’re not good enough to do this because the professional now needs help.

Let me stop you right here and say it’s perfectly normal. Doctors need doctors too, personal trainers often ask for help from other personal trainers so there’s no shame in needing advice, assistance, or help in any way. Let this be an opportunity for growth and introspection over self-pity and guilt. Even the professional needs to take a moment and check their self from time to time to ensure they’re health and posture is safe.

If you think this is the only time you’ll be at this point, think again. How many times have you, the fitness or health pro, suggested someone eat healthy and then did the opposite? The point is it’s going to happen so don’t beat yourself up. Just like falling off a bicycle you need to get back on it and ride again and most of all remember that it happens to the best of us.

This could also be a wakeup call for you in that you’ve been spending so much time with everyone else that you haven’t been taking the necessary time to check on yourself. What posture have you consistently been holding while you write up reports, correct others, and just go about your activities of daily living? It’s easy to lose track when you’re stressed out or busy.

So, here we go, let’s do it together. Start by paying attention to how you’re sitting now and make a mental effort to pay closer attention to the way you’re performing your activities of daily living. Can you adjust your seat or sitting position? What about the position of your desk, table, and/or chair and the way your monitor or mobile device is positioned? Change it now if you can.

Think about your sleeping and resting habits also. Are you slouching around in poor alignment after a long, hard day of winning at life? What about your pillows and bed itself? You’d be surprised how often these aren’t on a list of things to change to improve posture.

Next, let’s go over the four points of NPI’s four points of posture program:

1. Sit or stand up straight and tall
2. Hold your chest high
3. Retract your shoulders as if trying to pinch a pencil
4. Contract your abdominals

You probably already know the timeline for this also, but here’s a reminder: Do these 4 points for five minutes, three times daily. After the first week you can increase this to 5 minutes 6 times a day and so forth. See, you knew it, that wasn’t so bad, right? You just needed a little reminder that you’re also human and bound to struggle with your posture. You also need to take the time to check in on yourself and make adjustments.

If you’re new to our 4 points of posture program and you’re interested in learning to analyze, assess, and correct posture then check out our NPI-Certified Posture Specialist™ program. This is what we’re all about. We’re here to teach professionals like you how to save the world one spine at a time.

Here’s the link >>