There has been a lot of stuff floating around in the health and fitness world about how we as humans need to get back to our prehistoric ways. Everything from eating twigs, leaves and berries to running around barefoot. Now don’t get me wrong, barefoot training and eating meat and potatoes like a caveman can have its benefits, but one thing that needs to change is the way we look at and train our posture. Lets try and avoid the way our knuckle dragging ancestors looked.

It seems as though it’s one of the things that gets neglected by some trainees. After all, if you believe in evolution, we did evolve into a biped with an upright posture right? Then why is there so much emphasis on exercises that make our posture worse? Let me give you a story about Johnny “Big Bench” Smith. Some of you might know him.

Johnny gets out of bed, hunches over his sink and primps himself before leaving for work in the morning. He then slouches over his table while he eats breakfast. After a nutritious breakfast of coffee and a pastry strudel he jumps into his car, slumps into his seat with his head poking forward and his rearview mirror tilted downward so he can see out of the rear window. Then he gets to his miserable desk job and sits for 8 hours while he pushes papers all day, shoulders rounded forward and arms in front of him (much like I’m doing right now). Then he jumps back into his car and drives to the gym, and since it’s Monday, it’s Chest Day. So that means he’s going to hit the bench press, incline press, and then rep out on pushups to really drive home the bad posture and further shorten the muscles of his upper torso. And then, he’s going to get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Your posture is one component of your health that you have some control over so why not make the most of it. Poor posture can lead to a plethora of long term injuries that may not seem important right now, but you can bet on them coming back and biting you later in life.

For most of us, we can really benefit from three times as many pulling movements than pushing movements. That means exercises like chin ups, pull ups, dumbbell rows, inverted rows, Y-T-W-L’s, and band pull-aparts. For people like Johnny “Big Bench” adding in extra pulling exercises will only improve his benching by building a better base (his back) to push from. However, more importantly, they’ll improve his posture and improve his appearance. Just because you can’t see your back in a mirror, doesn’t mean other people can’t see your back!

Train smart,

Jaison

Jaison Naiker is a personal trainer in the Seattle area. If you're interested in reaching your goals and getting REAL RESULTS from your fitness and strength program, contact him right away!

Jaison has blogged 32 posts here.