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Posture - Part 3  : Top and bottom (feet and head)

(First featured DNA January 2010)

 Extract about my method for improving posture - as easy as One, Two, Three, Four

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Posture - Foot positioning and head alignment

We learnt that good posture starts with being aware of your spine and shoulder position. Activating core muscles to support your lower back in all movements – that’s “one”. Being aware of your shoulder position and drawing your shoulder blades back to open up your chest if needed – that’s “two”. Together they help keep you aware of being as tall, taut-waisted and broad shouldered as you can, reeking of confidence and sex appeal. To round out your stats and claim your place amongst the powerful and postured, you’ll first need some solid grounding before getting a good heads-up about how to keep it all for life.

Foot position

How you ground yourself gives you stability and a great base of support. Our feet and ankles are amazing contraptions with some pretty intricate bones and muscles. Capable of sustaining our body weight in jumps, running and crazy things like busting moves on the dancefloor (yup get ‘em ready for Mardi Gras people).

The problem is that most people treat feet as an afterthought, as if always going to be happy hitting the ground any old way. Not so. Getting older brings various knee, hip and backaches that can often come from bad foot and ankle placement.

“Three” is becoming aware of how the base of your foot is contacting the ground at any time. “Three” is really getting in touch with your sole!

When standing or doing exercises like squats or deadlifts, you should feel pretty much your whole foot in contact with the ground - except for your arch. You should feel identical distribution of weight over both left and right sides. Shift your foot and leg muscles until you do.

Walking or moving is a little different, and whilst discussing foot biomechanics (yawn) is more detail than I’ll go into (phew!) here are some basics to be aware of:

  • Walking - you land on your heel, then roll over the whole foot sole except your arch, and lightly push off with toes. I call it “wave walking” – rolling from heel to toe in a kind of wave motion.
  • Running or higher impact stuff - land in front of your heel somewhere to absorb some of the impact through the foot itself. You wouldn’t land a jump on your heels so why do it when running?
  • “Normal” feet point out very slightly (about 5-7 degrees). Be aware if your toes point inwards or very far out to first rule out any medical condition, and then try altering the way your foot lands.

Here’s two activities to get you going:

  1. Go barefoot, or in flexible thin-soled shoes, where safe. Running, walking, even doing weights feel much different when you become keenly aware of how your bodyweight moves on your feet.
  2. Strengthen your foot and ankle muscles: Practice standing and landing on different parts of your feet, often. Don’t just clomp around forgetting your leg-ends have a personality of their own!

Head position

The final element, “four” has you stretching up towards the sky, and is important when you are sitting or standing. People at desks know when your head sits too far forward you get neck strain.

“Four” is lifting the crown of your head as if being pulled up with a string. Your jaw line should end up horizontal.

Your neck vertebrae, the top of your spine, finish somewhere at the back of your skull roughly beneath your crown, so “four” helps to fully engage and lengthen your whole back.

The overall effect of combining 1, 2, 3, and 4 in order is first a straightening out of the spine, grounding, then lifting tall. Once again, keep yourself reminded of the sequence any way possible, until with frequent practice it becomes an automatic habit. You’ll be standing proud (on sole-aware feet), staring bad posture in the eye (or the top of its head, depending how slouched it is).

There’s no magic, instant way to score the inherent sexiness and power of a guy who knows how to hold himself. It takes a little practice but awareness of your core, shoulder blades, foot placement and head position is your own “potion” for perfect posture.