How do I stand up straight?

I am nineteen now and the fact that I slouch (sp) is starting to bother me. My shoulders are never held back fully and my neck seems to be starting to tilt forward. Before I went to a doctor I wanted to post on here to see if anyone has had or has a similar situation and knows anyways to help me out.

I have tried thinking and noticing that I am slouching more often to hopefully pull my shoulders back, but when I do pull them back it doesn't feel natural.

Is there any exercises or stretches or anything at all that I can do to help head this off?

Or would it just be wise to go straight to a doctor now? If so should it be my general doctor or should I be seeing some sort of specialist.

I just don't want to end up with one of the question mark curves when I get older.

Thanks for the help.

 

Lift weights, if forces you to do it with a straight back.

 

Also, buy a neck traction device. It is just a little head harness with a line through a couple of pulleys and a weight. Rig it up so you can use it where you sit most often so it is convenient. If your neck and back are straight, then your shoulders will naturally fall into place.

You can make it yourself. Use a towel looped under your jaw. Tie the end of the loop closed with a small cord that will then feed through a pulley above your seating position. Then feed it through a second pulley and down to your weight. Experiment with the amount of weight beginning small. Don't over do it. For the weight you can use a heavy duty plastic bag that you can put water in so it's easily adjustable.

I had a setup like this for therapy after a neck injury and I found that it helped improve my posture after prolonged use.

 

Don't want to slouch?

I think you need strong stomach muscles to help keep that back strong and strait.

 

See the doctor but get his OK to get a personal trainer for some exercise at the gym.

 

Torque1st, good, sound advice.

How many of us start a workout program without any doctor's advice; do the weekend warrior thing, only to pay for it the following week.

 

After agreeing with Torque1st...start with pushups. Weights can be good, but always make sure you can do a decent amount of pushups first. Using your own body weight is good. Make sure you have someone watch you that knows what to look for technique-wise, I thought I was doing them correctly until I went to the Y with a buddy and had someone show me what I was doing wrong. And stretch, VERY important in the overall package. Doing the excersises w/o it will just tense muscles up. You might even do stretches for a few days before starting any workouts, at the beginning it IS the workout for many.

I'm in the same boat as you are (read the electrical sensations thread if you want a good reason to improve). Try not to do too many, if any, excersises that isolate your neck and adjoining muscles, you'll tire out those muscles and then naturally slouch to let them rest. You need decent upper body strength to have good posture inluding abs and your back. Pushups give you a (decently) full upper body workout if done correctly. Doing some research there is a lot of conflicting info out there, even among pros. Just telling you what is working for me.

After that? Take up a sport like basketball or the like that has you in constant changes of postition. I've taken up yoga as well (though many would scoff at the idea, I think it's made more diff. than everything alse combined), some of this stuff is way harder than it looks. My overall flexibility and strength/stamina has gone way up just in the last 3 or 4 weeks. This again requires someone to watch your technique though, technique is most of it.

Make sure you have a decent bed and chairs too. Good luck. I'd do a Google search for 'Good posture excersises/stretches' and read up for yourself.

 

i have the exact same problem, i am 30 now, i have had it since i can remember, but unfortuntly i never noticed until later.

anyways, does it hurt your back yet? mine use to hurt constantly when standing for awhile, really sucks. and i beleive you have to go to a physical therapist, thats what my doctor told me to do.

but what really helped was exercising, as lots of people said, it really heped out a bunch though i do get the sore upper back sometimes now, plus its not really noticable now, because my muscles have bulked up on my chest and shoulders and back so i just look like a sort of big guy walking now..

exercise and go to a physical therapist, thats what i reccomend.

 

These are the answers. Consciously making an effort to stand-up straight and stretching. I, like you, slouched when I was young (people constantly telling me to "stand-up straight"), and then nearly a decade of being a light infantry paratrooper, carrying a rucksack that weighed only 15 lbs less than my body weight, just made it worse. But after injuring my shoulder and being told that as a result of my previous posture I now had a "slight" curvature of the spine, I went to physical therapy and one of the problems they addressed was my posture. All they had me do to correct my poor posture was to do a lot of hamstring stretches (bending over to touch my toes), chest stretches, and the hardest part, actually focus on standing-up straight. It turns out it's not easy to constantly be focusing on your posture no matter what you're doing, sitting, standing, whatever. And you're right, at first it feels unnatural. It can take a lot of time to correct bad posture. What everybody is saying here helps a lot as well. Strengthening your core muscles and seeing a doctor to make sure that there are no underlying medical problems causing it. But I'll tell you it's well worth all the effort and you're definitely smarter than I was by noticing it and correcting it now and not waiting until you're approaching 40 to start. Hang tough!

 

Thanks for all the responses so far guys.

I have gone to my doctor about this before and he gave me one of those flexable bandage/wrap things. He wrapped it around my shoulders and around my back, and it really seemed to work. The only problem with it was if I took it off to shower or whatever I wouldn't be able to tie it back up myself.

I am wondering if there is some sort of light brace that can be worn under my shirt, and that won't interfere or protrude to much, that would help out.

 

I'm not trying to scare you but,
Did your doctor do a test for ankylosingspondilitis ?

I have 2 friends that developed this disease before they turned 25 & 30 respectively.

You could also have develop a spine curving syndrome that can end up bending you forward.The spine shrinks and causes the muscles around it to weaken.

Get tested.
It is only a blood test.

 

I would concentrate on back excersizes, not chest. For years I would work my chest more then my back (hey, I can see my chest...) and it left me imbalanced muscle wise with a very weak upper back. This made me slouch bad and cause a curve in my spine.

Basic thing is to think about your posture. It's hard because you're not used to it. I improved my posture a ton just by paying attention.

If you start to exercise, remember to balance your major muscle groups (ie. chest and back, bicep and tricep...) and stretch.

Good luck,
David

 

Pushups do work your back...if done correctly.

 

Join the Marines, after my friend joined he sat straight up everywhere with no slouching while eating (I now know what they mean by three squares a day because they eat with a square motion), parties, bars, etc. We thought he was fit before he when it, we were wrong, the Marines corrected that :-)