Posture for a Healthy Back

Kelly Starret has a great quote about this: "your best position is your next position".

Which is really another way of staying that you should be moving and changing positions frequently. Sitting to standing, on a stool, one foot up, then the other, etc.

You can really run in to problems when you are sitting in the same horrible posture for hours on end. One side benefit of a standing desk is that it makes it a lot harder to stay in one position for hours because you can't slump back against a char. So you actively have to find ways to support your own weight, or at least you realize you are slumping forward in an awkward way onto the standing desk and you change position.

yes - in my opinion, everyone should do barbell training, including (especially) women. it fundamentally changes you for the better. physically and mentally.

beware the person who warns against it - they have an agenda. it's unquestionably good for you when done properly and within your limits of capability.

i've heard less of the "but i don't want to get huge and bulky like a bodybuilder" these days, probably because as resistance training increases in popularity, people are realizing how incredibly, ridiculously, ludicrously, unreasonably difficult it is to build and maintain muscle.

I also have flexibility issues (I'm tall), and I used to strain my lower back on heavy squats until I widened my stance and pointed my toes a bit more outwards, to prevent my lower back from rounding. You could ask someone to check if your lower back arches towards of the downwards movement.

I recently hurt my back and got interested in the anatomy of the lumbar spine and ended up reading the textbook Low Back Disorders by Stuart McGill. McGill is a professor of kinesiology at the University of Waterloo and has spent his ~30 yr research career studying the lower back. It was an informative and surprisingly interesting read!

He made the point throughout the book that a lot of "common sense" clinical wisdom regarding the low back has little basis in the scientific literature. Among these was that there really is no "correct" sitting posture. All sitting postures are damaging to the low back over long periods of time. Instead he recommends varying the sitting posture at least every ~10 minutes or so, and standing up for a few minutes at least once an hour. Acceptable sitting postures could be anything from sitting up straight as in the illustration in the article, leaning back, sitting cross-legged in the chair, or putting your feet up on the desk. All are fine as long as you change it up every now and again.

There were a few other bits of wisdom in the book. A few I remember off the top of my head:

- Don't do sit-ups under any circumstances. They are among the worst exercises you can do for your back. The traditional back extension exercise (e.g., http://lifestyle.beiruting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/su...) also puts the lower back under a huge amount of stress.

- Muscle strength is not well correlated with having a healthy back. Muscle endurance is much better correlated with back health.

- Don't do anything to exert your back within an hour or two after waking up (including stretching the back to extreme flexion by, for instance, trying to touch your toes). The hydrostatic pressure in the discs after rising from bed is much greater, which increases the risk of herniation. (This is why one is ~1/2 an inch taller in the morning than in the evening.)

- If the spine is flexed for a long period of time (e.g., one is sitting slouched over for twenty minutes), the ligaments become lax and remain lax for some time afterwards. Only 50% of the intervertebral joint stiffness remains two minutes later, and even 30 minutes later some residual laxity remained. So if you've been sitting slouched over, don't immediately go and exert your back by lifting a heavy object. Stand up for a few minutes before exertion.

- Squatting is not necessarily better than stooping when picking up an object. It's most important to keep the spine in a neutral posture.

- When picking up a light object, it's best to use the golfer's lift if possible (e.g., https://liftingtechniques.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/golf.p...)

Agreed, based on personal experience.

For a typical person without special circumstances deadlifting with proper posture is the most important exercise you need to be doing, IMO. Personally, I was amazed that my minor back aches were gone, my shoulders stayed back without effort, and I was more confident in my posture. Why didn't someone tell me to deadlift sooner in life?