Today we’re starting a series tackling the most common questions we get from patients after their first visit or two. We’ll address some common myths and misconceptions, and talk through some typical pitfalls on the road to recovery. Today’s question:

What’s the proper way to move? I’m sure I stand/walk/sit/lie down wrong.

(3 minute read)

We get some version of this question multiple times every day. Oftentimes it’s not even a question, it’s the statement “I know I have terrible posture”. The following sentence gets it’s own paragraph, such is its importance:

There is no such thing as good or bad posture.

This is not to say that posture never has an effect on pain. But it would be more accurate to say that long periods spent in the SAME posture can lead to pain. This makes sense for any position you can get your body into. 

How long can you sit in a squat position or hold your hands above your head before something starts to hurt? Probably much less than a minute - yet nobody would argue that these are harmful or wrong positions for your body to be in. 

Spend 8 hours in a slouched position at your desk though, and it’s not the time spent but the position itself that is diagnosed as the problem. Simply sit properly, we are told, and no amount of time spent sitting will cause you pain. 

This so-called solution can make the problem worse. If we are told there is a “best” way to sit, we are more likely to spend longer hours in the same posture. This can lead not only to pain but confusion also. If I’m sitting properly now, why do I still have pain? All too frequently, the answer we settle on is that we weren’t adhering well enough to the rules of “proper posture”. We then pay more and more attention to smaller and smaller deviations from the “ideal”, each successive painful episode only further proof that our posture must be terrible.

A good counter-example to this is thinking about how people who don’t have pain sit or move. Generally, they don’t think about it at all. If you asked them which leg they tend to stand on, or how they stand up, or how high their pillow is, or how much their back bends on the sofa, they probably couldn’t tell you. They’re using what Louis Gifford called “thoughtless, fearless movement”. It’s quick, smooth and very efficient.

People in pain (or who have experienced pain), on the other hand, tend to think about it more. You probably know someone who braces themselves when they lift a kettle, or sets their feet just right every time they stand up from a chair. These movements are slower, laboured and require more energy. This can exhaust muscles quicker which can cause…more aches and pains.

Movement Variability

We sometimes talk about “movement variability” in the clinic. This means moving in lots of different ways to do the same thing. Pain-free people tend to have lots of variability in their movements, while pain sufferers tend to have less variability - they make the same movements repeatedly. Things like constantly bracing your core or refusing to let your back bend would be examples of movements with low variability.

[Side note: if our backs weren’t meant to bend, or our heads weren’t meant to come forward of our body, we wouldn’t be able to do it at all.]

Sometimes I wonder whether what we perceive as the first signs of ageing are just the loss of variability in our movement. One day we just stop climbing trees, or jumping off things, or sprinting as fast as we can, or doing forward rolls and cartwheels, and we never do it again. We seem to walk between desk and car… and that’s it. Like the saying goes, we don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.

We encourage our patients to become comfortable doing all sorts of movements. This can lead to higher levels of variability in their movement, more tolerance in their tissues of different positions, and ultimately lower levels of pain. It’s why I personally believe that Pilates and Yoga do so much good for so many people. They have people performing lots of different movements that they wouldn’t perform otherwise. Not jumping out of trees but still movements not commonly found in everyday life. Their movements become quicker, smoother and more varied. Oh, and less painful.

My favourite case study on this subject is a kitchen fitter who’d recently moved to the area. He was used to near constant back pain, and saw a chiropractor on a regular basis previously. He would struggle with keeping a “neutral spine”, especially when trying to contort himself into awkward spaces while working. When I told him that it was safe to bend his back he nearly fell off his chair. By the time of his 3rd visit he’d not had pain for a month and that simple advice had saved him weeks of unnecessary anxiety, effort and pain. I called him recently to check in - it’s been 12 months - and he’s not had any major episodes since.

Have you got a burning question you’d like answered? Send us your questions and we’ll answer them on the blog!