The Power of Good Sitting Posture: How Posture Affects Your Productivity and Health
In a health-conscious society, posture is just as important as dietary and workout habits. There is more to good sitting posture than meets the eye, and in many instances, it can even be an effective indicator of how well you are maintaining your health. Good sitting posture not only benefits your image but also contributes to the proper functioning of your nervous system.
When it comes to a good sitting posture, it’s not just about looks. Beneath the confident image that you portray when you sit and stand straight is an individual whose bones, muscles, and ligaments are correctly aligned and more likely to work harmoniously together as intended. Remember that good posture also means a good health condition.
If you maintain proper bone, muscular, and joint structure, your vital organs are protected and work optimally. Your body will be functioning properly and get rid of possible health concerns.
The inability to maintain good or proper posture is an inability to protect your overall health and total performance in all of your endeavours.
Unknown to many, essential bodily functions such as digestion, breathing, muscular movement, and even train of thought can be influenced by how you sit or stand.
Without a good sitting posture, how you perform even the most basic movements may be affected. This somehow explains why an individual who does not maintain proper posture may often experience exhaustion, inability to think, poor hand and feet coordination, and other severe effects of stress.
What Poor Posture Does to Your Muscles
When your muscles, bones, joints, and ligaments are misaligned —in other words, when your posture is poor, other parts of your body may suffer from misalignment. As a result, your body’s other sectors would have to work twice as hard to support your movement.
This explains why some parts of your body hurt more than others; the lack of balance causes other parts of your body to overexert themselves because they fail to distribute the effort efficiently across different muscle groups.
Overexertion further leads to exhaustion, and this explains why you might feel quickly drained after working on specific tasks.
Also, poor posture strains your neck, and the tension will cause it to be more susceptible to headaches, stiff neck, or worse, migraines. Some physiotherapists also believe that slouching hints at shorter life expectancy.
Although it is believed that many things can cause headaches, its physical triggers often begin with poor posture, slouching, or sleeping without supporting your head properly. Other triggers may include poor dietary habits, dehydration, excessive exposure to heat or the cold, stress, adverse reactions to food, and lack of physical exercise.
Aside from other discomforts that can be seen, there are plenty of other health problems caused by poor posture, which may not be instantly noticeable. When you slouch, sit incorrectly, or fail to keep your body aligned, you will also unknowingly disrupt your body’s sufficient blood circulation. This ultimately results in exhaustion, stress, and other health issues.
Reclaim Your Health
If you have yet to maintain a good workout routine, focusing on your posture as you work throughout the day may be enough to keep you healthy. If you don’t know where to start, begin by doing some daily exercises that aim to strengthen your postural muscles.
You can do this exercise:
- Sit on all fours while straightening your legs, lift your heels, and raise your hips.
- Next, try to strengthen your back to engage your core, leg, and arm muscles.
- Then you need to extend the back of your neck, relax your throat and look down.
- Meanwhile, try to keep your shoulders back and your chest open.
As the name suggests, these are the muscles intended to keep your body aligned and the muscles that are responsible for good sitting posture.
Invest at least ten minutes of your day into strengthening your back muscles, neck, spine, or lumbar regions, back legs, and feet so you can get your body accustomed to better posture and movement.
If your work requires you to stay seated for hours, stand in between hours, and give your body a good stretch. Alternatively, work while standing up using an ergonomic converter desk; you can set it up on your desk whenever you feel like switching positions.
Remember that it is important to find a middle ground between standing and sitting. Standing or sitting too much is not good for your health either.
The idea is that you should create a balance between the two. When you have been sitting for five hours, let’s say then you have been sitting too much, and it is time to stand and move a bit.
Ideally, it would be great if you could take a ten-minute break every hour when you are on the job. If ten minutes is too much to do for your schedule, try it for a few minutes, at least.
How a Good Sitting Posture Affects Productivity and Performance
The most apparent ‘side-effect’ of good sitting posture is that it conveys good health, confidence, and energy. Although this opinion is somewhat outdated, it is still common to believe that good sitting posture also conveys class. In some instances, it silently elicits respect, as if you were wearing a fancy suit.
Physically, hunching or slouching makes it more difficult for you to speak because you are unknowingly compressing your lungs when you slouch. When you talk with your back straight and appropriately aligned with the rest of your body, you can project your voice better and look more poised. Medical experts recommended using ergonomic equipment such as a standing desk and desk converters
Conclusion
When it comes to office productivity, good posture allows you to focus on your task at hand better because you are allowing blood and oxygen to circulate throughout your body with little to no disruptions. As you probably know, you need a healthy and sufficient amount of these if you desire to concentrate better. This will also help in getting rid of the possible effects of a sedentary lifestyle.
