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Other/Mixed Posture : Leading with your belly

Other strength modalities (e.g., Clubs), mixed strength modalities (e.g., combined kettlebell and barbell), other goals (flexibility)

BillSteamshovel

Level 6 Valued Member
I'm aware that I have poor posture and am always reminding myself to pull my shoulders back and down ( ie the opposite of slumped forward and droopy shoulders) . My wife reminds me as well.

I remembered a line from one of Pavel's books today about Russian people walking around a corner - you see their belly first.

So I tried walking around town "leading" with my belly. This seems to automatically pull my shoulders back a little bit, enough to remind me that I have to pull them down as well.

For me its much easier to remember to lead with my belly and to put it into practice than "Pull your shoulders into your back pockets"
 
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Leading with your belly always sounded like anterior pelvic tilt to me.


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I'm also of the opinion that if the right muscles are strong, you don't really need to think about good posture. It just happens naturally.
I have posture issues as well.
I think among all other possible solution, strengthening the muscles is the most important piece of puzzle. It is one of the most difficult due to nature of those small muscles and hence undermined and hence most postural problems go unsolved.

Ie. I used to do facepulls. I did them for a good 6 months at least. Maybe my posture was improved a few degrees which is impossible to detect in normal life, but then I dropped facepulls. Maybe if I continued them two years my problems would have been solved . But the progress is not as easy to detect as in developing your strength with other exercises.
 
Leading with your belly always sounded like anterior pelvic tilt to me.


View attachment 20341


I'm also of the opinion that if the right muscles are strong, you don't really need to think about good posture. It just happens naturally.
Thanks for the sketches and advice.

I see my physio on Friday and will take your sketches and get his opinion regarding belly forward/pelvic tilt.

If that is what I am doing is it worse than slouching/slumping/drooping forwards ? It certainly feels better to me and my wife thinks it looks better than the droopy forward slumped shoulders.

When I poke my belly forward it feels more like I am transitioning from position a to position b in your sketches. Which seems to be the opposite to what you are saying with the sketches. My hips do not feel like they are tilted forward when I poke my belly forward. The hips feel like they are tilted forward when I fall into the droopy slumped shoulder position

and yes I agree about the right muscles but that is probably what is occuring ie the right muscles are not strong enough and I keep slouching/slumping/drooping forwards.

Are your two sketches the only possible two options ?

Will see what physio says on Friday.
 
Leading with your belly always sounded like anterior pelvic tilt to me.
Only if you point your belly to the ground. (smiling but not kidding - leading means point it forwards.)

The image I prefer, if one is familiar with some things Chinese, is leading with the lower dantian (sometimes spelled dan tien) - I think it's really leading with your hips, but belly works for me, too.

I'm also of the opinion that if the right muscles are strong, you don't really need to think about good posture. It just happens naturally.
For me, the postural image is feeling like I'm suspend from a string at the crown of my head. That gentle lifting up is what works for me, and while it does happen naturally sometimes, if I've been sitting at a desk for several hours and then go for a walk, I need the beginning of the walk for a gut/belly check a few times as I'm starting out to get things back to where they should be. @Brett Jones' image of trying to break an invisible piece of glass at the top of your swing with the crown of your head is, for me, very much the same thing - less vigorous, of course, but it's cueing the same kind of posture.

JMO, YMMV.

-S-
 
"Americans" tend to enter a room chest first while Russians enter a room hips first is a paraphrase of the comment from Pavel.

Think tight hips (up front—the anterior tilted posture) so the hips are "behind" the chest while if the hips are "open" they will "sit" forward/level and the chest will be over the hips or hips slightly "leading."
 
@Steve Freides thanks for the Tai Chi string analogy - did a few years of Tai Chi so that makes sense to me.

@Brett Jones Thanks for the notes, I have very limited awareness of hips so the terms "open" "sit forward/level" mean little for me.
Could anybody recommend books or discussions or videos or exercises to educate self a bit better about hips ?

@Ege - Like you, I keep on doing various exercises with broomsticks and rubber bands and wall slides in the hope they will eventually show some benefit - the way I see it it took me many years to become droopy so it will probably take a few years of conscious effort to reverse it.
 
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Only if you point your belly to the ground. (smiling but not kidding - leading means point it forwards.)

The image I prefer, if one is familiar with some things Chinese, is leading with the lower dantian (sometimes spelled dan tien) - I think it's really leading with your hips, but belly works for me, too.


For me, the postural image is feeling like I'm suspend from a string at the crown of my head. That gentle lifting up is what works for me, and while it does happen naturally sometimes, if I've been sitting at a desk for several hours and then go for a walk, I need the beginning of the walk for a gut/belly check a few times as I'm starting out to get things back to where they should be. @Brett Jones' image of trying to break an invisible piece of glass at the top of your swing with the crown of your head is, for me, very much the same thing - less vigorous, of course, but it's cueing the same kind of posture.

JMO, YMMV.

-S-

I second the lifting head on a string cue and dan tien (which is the center of gravity of the body). You want to stack your joints rather than just pull your shoulders back and down. Where is your head in relation to your spine? Being conscious of that helps.

The other thing to pay attention to is your eye gaze. Is your gaze on the horizon or looking down. Phones have made this worse but most people don't actually look forward. Work on your distant peripheral vision like you are watching out for danger and it can help your posture and even eye health. Watching the eye position and gait of people walking on the street is instructive. Gaze should lead movement. The eyes lead the head; the head leads the body. This is a good Turkish getup cue as well.

Another point that is not often mentioned is the relationship between tight lats and posture. A lot of people don't realize how tight their lats are from a hunched sitting position until they foam roll them.

In short, a common error is only focusing on the point of pain or disfunction when movement is really a chain of interconnected parts. In practice this means that posture is problems are indicated by shoulder position but this is the result of poor head position, lack of movement variety (should internal rotation), tight lats, tight pecs (notice how much your open up your chest and its effect on posture after a pec stretch), poor thoratic mobility/weak spinal muscles (Dan John batwings exercise good here) and probably other factors.

Foot problems can be helped by calf stretching and strengthening etc.

You can't go wrong to start by just focusing on keeping your head and spine more aligned.

I am trying to fix this problem as well.
 
@Brett Jones Thanks for the notes, I have very limited awareness of hips so the terms "open" "sit forward/level" mean little for me.
Could anybody recommend books or discussions or videos or exercises to educate self a bit better about hips ?
IANBJ (I Am Not Brett Jones) but I will share with you the way I teach this, which is pretty simple (which means it's an oversimplification for the purposes of teaching, but it's basically OK).

When reading below, take your time and visualize each of these things below as if looking at yourself from the side so you can see the tilt much like in some of the illustrations in previous posts. We start with:


You can pull your hips
Up in the front​
Down in the front​
Up in the back​
Down in the back​


Then:

You position your hips using
Up in the front - abs​
Down in the front - hip flexors​
Up in the back - lumbar​
Down in the back - hips and hamstrings​


Problems:

Anterior tilt
Up in the front - abs - not enough (too weak)​
Down in the front - hip flexors - too much (too tight)​
Up in the back - lumbar - too much (too tight)​
Down in the back - hips and hamstrings - not enough (too weak)​

Posterior tilt
Up in the front - abs - too much (too tight)​
Down in the front - hip flexors - not enough (too weak)​
Up in the back - lumbar - not enough (too weak)​
Down in the back - hips and hamstrings - too much (too tight)​

We seek balance. Not many people need to stretch their abs, but the other three usually require some combination of strengthening and stretching, and since we know a strong muscle will stretch more easily than a weak one, our approach might be called StrongFirst. :)

Hope this is helpful.

-S-
 
FYI :

Physio took one look at my interpretation of leading with the belly, shuddered , and said "No don't do that".

He gave me another way to think about it .... "Always make sure your sternum is in front of your shoulders, in other words walk with your chest up and forward" I will try that as I seem to be unable to remember to pull my shoulders back and down.

Another tip was "Think about keeping your elbows closer to your sides as you walk - this makes you do a slight external rotation of the shoulders"

I think different cues will "stick" and be effective for different people to achieve the same end result.

On another note he gave me clearance to start doing light presses with my right arm (no lifts above head on RH side for last 8 weeks due to impinged shoulder) so am quite chuffed - was thoroughly enjoying the pressing program from the App before I hurt my shoulder.
 
@BillSteamshovel i am not exactly sure what you have going on, but I am not a fan of the “shoulders down and back” cue. You are correct that it “pushes your belly forward;” it has the tendency to push the ribcage/thorax forward, and as I believe you found out, cause things like anterior pelvic tilt.

I like to think of posture from the ground up. Where do you carry your weight in your feet?

Try this:
Stand up and close you eyes. Relax your body, and don’t try to do anything special. Just take a minute or two there to feel where the pressure is in the soles of your feet. Forward? More on one foot than the other?

Now without doing anything anywhere but your feet, shift your weight to where it feel even in your feet; front to back , side to side, and from foot to foot.

See if you feel a difference in your posture.

Sticking your belly/chest forward in space might push your center of gravity forward (feeing the pressure towards the front of your feet). It can be a component of swayback posture or anterior pelvic tilt. I find that if I get my weight back towards my heels a bit (actually more even front to back), any pelvic tilt I have auto-corrects.

It helps to stack the ribs above the pelvis more evenly, which ought to help with the shoulders as well.

I also recommend chasing this guys stuff out. He has a timid videos on YouTube as well.


Hope it helps.
 
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