Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Look Better, Breath Better, Code Better, Perform Better

Bad Posture WestLB, 2002


What's the problem?

If you've been putting in long hours on your computer and devices for a few years now (and I know you have), you might be developing a sweet programmer slouch.  The shoulders are are all rounded forward, head is always forward and back is always rounded.  This awesome posture gives you a cute little pot belly no matter how lean you are or aren't.  You exude confidence with this powerful posture of constant cowering. 

I was unaware how poor my posture had gotten and how bad posture is among my peers.  Head forward, shoulders forward back rounded.  This is so common you've probably rarely even seen someone with good posture (unless you work with Marines).  I thought I was doing fine because most everyone I knew look like that more or less. It seemed normal. There is an important distinction between what is common and what is normal.  It is common especially among desk jockeys, but it's not normal in that your body is not meant to be imbalanced and broken. So many of us are slammed into cubicles with monitor(s), keyboard and a mouse and we spend 8+ hours sitting in front of the computer and our bodies adapt to this.

How does that affect me?

Now you might be saying "So darn what if I have a slouch, I sling mad code and I just get in to it.  I've been doing this for years and I'm doing fine".  You might be doing ok now, but you are setting yourself up for headaches, and back/neck pain if you are lucky, and if your not you could get worse injuries that will affect your productivity.

The biggest immediate reason I could give you if vanity isn't good enough and caring about how hard life will be in old age, would be that in proper posture you can breath better.  Breathing better will give you better oxygen to your brain and clearer thought.  To you hunched geniuses, what that means is that you could be doing even better work.  So yeah, sit/stand better, breath better and think/code better.

Anything else?

For those of you that do sports, there is an even bigger need for fixing your posture.  If you allow your body to adapt in this way, you will lose natural ranges of motion for your joints.  While you can work around these by using the ranges of motion you do have, this is where sports injuries come from.  If you can't get your shoulders and spine back into a stable natural position you start to put excessive strain on those joints, ligaments and musculature.  This is a sure fire recipe for injury.

Now what?

"OK fine I need to fix my posture, how do I go about doing that?" Well I'm glad you asked.  Now I'm not an expert at this, I'm just someone who is working on fixing all the years of damage I've already done.  So I'll defer to people who are experts.

Check out this video for some basic explanation and exercises you can do at your desk.  Upper Cross Syndrome

Now if you want a more intensive correction than just some office chair exercises there are lots of resources out there.  For athletic performance the  primary one I'd recommend is MobilityWod. Here is a link that will get you pointed in the right direction https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mobility+wod+posture .  Dr. Kelly Starrett will help you work on fixing all sorts of problems related to sitting and sports performance. Be warned there is much higher level of work and discomfort on this path, but you can get faster and more thorough results.

Images: Bad Posture

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