Ask HN: Tricks to improve posture?

You need to make sure your desk is properly set up (screen, keyboard, chair). There shouldn't be any reason to slouch if it is properly set up.

Do core workouts. While doing the work-out, really concentrate on keeping your core stable and your breathing in sync with your motions. Learning how to brace your core unconsciously will help more with your posture than anything else.

All those ergonomic solutions force you to position yourself well, but they won’t work unless you have the strength to hold it.

I've been sitting on the floor, resting my laptop on the coffee table. When I get tired, I put the coffee table on the dining room table and stand. I used to fatigue quite quickly and go back to regular desk, but after 3 weeks of this, that's how i spend the majority of the working day. You can't use your chair's back support when you're on the floor or standing so you're forced to engage your core muscles.

Try a $20 upper back brace. Wear it for 20 minutes at a time while you're working. It conditions your upper back to straighten up and become less rounded.

https://www.amazon.com/Posture-Corrector-Men-Women-Truweo/dp...

Mounted or raised screen and a yoga/exercise ball. Also, do squat exercises.

I use meditation. I spend 20-30 minutes sitting on the floor focused on my breathing and muscle tension. Without anything to support myself, as I relax, I'll slowly find a pretty good posture. It's hard to hunch over when you aren't leaning on a keyboard. I find that it tends to translate over to the rest of my day.

Proper heavy deadlifts are one of the best exercises to help posture. It's impossible to get a good amount of weight off the floor slouched over, and after a few weeks of training this movement you'll have good posture habits drilled well into your head.

...at least once this whole virus situation clears up. In the meantime, maybe farmer carries with heavy book bags or somesuch? If you're not in proper posture it will hurt, but correct form will challenge your grip strength more than your back. Planks are also wonderful for building up the strength to keep good posture.

Farmer carry demo: https://youtu.be/cBv3NcxqhPM

If your chair allows it, lean back.

A new study suggests that sitting upright for hours at a time -- for example, when working at a computer -- may lead to chronic back pain. Instead, the best position for your back is somewhat reclined, sitting at a 135-degree angle rather than the 90-degree angle most office chairs are designed for.

https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/news/20061129/back-pain-ease...

I've had good success with the Upright GO.

It's a little device that you stick on your upper back and connect to your phone via Bluetooth. It detects when you're slouching and buzzes your back with a slight vibration to remind you to sit up straight.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0747YHYZF/

Yes. Strength training, especially back and shoulder exercises such as deadlifts, rows and shoulder press.

I'd advice doing whole body training though, rather than focusing on posture only.

I've tried a posture brace before. It helps to remind you to straighten up, but it didn't feel like a permanent solution. I eventually went back to bad posture when I stopped using it.

I agree with the strength training mentioned here, but I also found out I was sitting wrong. I always had my hips tilted too far forward, as if I was slightly slouching. Often made me hunch my upper back and my lower back would ache if I worked for too long.

I forget where I learned it, so unfortunately I can't provide professional guided advice, but I saw an article about sitting better and making sure your hips aren't too far forward or back. It took some getting used to as I had been sitting poorly for years. I needed time for certain things to stretch a bit so that it became natural, but now I've even had compliments on my posture while sitting.

Getting a split keyboard helped too. Being able to spread the two halves prevented my shoulders from pinching together in the front.

Stand up. Sitting all day just isn't natural, no matter what. Learn to do your desk-work from a standing position, barefoot, no shoes, and with a lot of little movements and stretching from time to time. And the workout ideas already mentioned are also great - build up your core. This is the way.

Start regularly attending yoga classes. This has improved my posture significantly over the past year. I personally enjoy power yoga classes that are more strength focused but all yoga will help with posture.

I've got the opposite problem. I would like to sit in one place for 8 hours... or even 1 hour. But I can't sit still for more than 20 minutes. Anyone got any tips for that?

I've been prescribed adderall before (I basically asked for it), and it was good, but I've cut it out since I don't like what it did to my personality.

Got myself a 75cm exercise ball last week to sit on. Improved my lower back in just 2 days and can see myself sitting up straighter. $10 ball so much better than a $1000 chair.

One easy-to-forget factor is lateral symmetry. Especially with asymmetric multi-monitor setups (including laptops), it’s easy to spend hours with the body facing straight, but the head tilted slightly to the side. This is probably very unhealthy for the neck/spine.

I am 52, male. Started wearing wooden clogs a couple of years ago, as I was experiencing similar symptoms as OP. Life-changing experience, this has been. My advice to OP: dispose of your sneakers and all of your comfy shoes. Wear nothing but wooden clogs instead.

All of the above/below. It's a complex problem (which I share) caused by a lifetime of habit, and it takes a long-term, multi-pronged/phased approach. A) Physical fitness: proper conditioning will allow you to hold posture for long periods of time without fatigue/strain (this is something you work towards over time). B) Physical environment: everything must allow you to maintain posture without excessive leaning/reaching/craning; don't hold a fixed position continuously, but your base state should be strain-free. C) Habits: take frequent stand/stretch breaks (sometimes I stand up if I am reading something that will take a minute or more; also remember to rest your eyes periodically; look out the window; engage in brief social interation; standing desks are great (alternate with sitting), especially if you get restless). D) Triggers: develop reminders about posture (if I see my reflection from the side or when I'm sitting in front of a TV...; I try to be (not self-)conscious of what an observer would see); when you stretch, use that to "reset" your postural expectation (through repetition, it will become your "natural state", and you will be aware of when you're out of sync with it); if I don't feel like I'm standing up really straight, then I'm not. E) Mental state: if you feel tired, depressed, preoccupied, etc. then you will lose track of all of this; it won't seem important, and you will regress; pick it back up again and move forward (it's about improvement/maintenance, not "fixing"). HTH.

Weight lifting is the only reliable medicine. Everything else is a band-aid.

This is a problem I faced which contributed to giving up my day job in front of a computer. The ongoing solution for me started by going to an exercise based physiotherapist.

Simplified, the anterior muscle chain (muscles along the front of your body) are over activated and are not working in balance with your posterior chain. The muscles in front are shorter and stronger. In back they are weaker and elongated. This especially in hunched forward posture and neck tension.

The muscles in front also work harder to hold your body upright as you are probably used to 'thinking' with the front of your body. Instead of being evenly balanced and distributed properly from the hips and up through the spine.

This is a simplification and each muscle in the body tends to have complementary and opposing muscles. Each individual will manifest problems in different areas and require strengthening and stretching accordingly.

My current physio has a Pilates studio and focuses on strengthening and stretching tailored to me. Not cheap but for me it has helped to identify and rethink how I move in an intuitive movement focused manner. 60 per week for an hour session so not prohibitive.

Also Alot of problems tend to have issues rooted in the glutes and hip flexors, I.e. an imbalance down there at the body's structural core manifest up through the spinal and muscle chain. This being the case with me I do a lot of glute work and hip flexor work as well as upper and lower back strengthening etc.

Eventually going to a gym or something similar being the goal, i suggest to start with a good excercise based physio, ones who do Pilates seem to have the right science & body mechanics approaches, to establish good form (which can be quite non intuitive if you have under active and over active muscles).. starting out at the gym may be overreaching and may compound imbalances... a good instructor may help but start at the physio imho.

Good luck!

I second everything about hitting the gym, seeing a physio, and focussing on back and glutes etc.. but for some tricks and cues, I recommend getting a great chair that you love, positioning your screen slightly higher and maybe closer than you normally would, get a MS sculpt keyboard which positions your shoulders outward more comfortably, pretend you're James Bond or some badass woman when you're walking around, and position your car seat at right angle if you drive. Also tell your partner if you have one to poke you when you slouch, and think abiut squeeezing your abs when you walk

There's a lot of information here, lots of people saying to work out. If you don't workout and start, I would advise starting slow and using proper form, also getting the advice of a professional or at least something that really knows what they're doing is paramount.

I'll throw out something that helped me - strengthening my upper back. My upper back was weak and not doing it's job which was causing my lower back to suffer.

In two parts:

1. Fix the underlying ergonomics. Put your monitor higher and your keyboard closer. The position you want is like the rest position of a dancer: elbows nearly against your sides, relaxed. (Taking an actual dance class will teach a lot about posture habits). A small change of a few degrees here and there can make a big difference. If you are a laptop user and have been actually resting it on your lap, try putting a shoebox or similarly sized object under it.

2. Train mobility. The hunch develops as a result of persistent overtraining in one direction. You don't need a lot of additional strength to start to correct this, just mobility.

Look up Youtube channel "Calisthenic Movement" - there are some very good mobility routines and I have incorporated parts of them into my everyday workout. Some of them use a pull-up bar but most are pure bodyweight and the floor or a wall.

If you want to stock a home gym I suggest going for resistance bands - they're small, light, cheap, more forgiving than weights and hugely versatile.

^F stool... phrase not found.

My strong suggestion is raise your desk to 36 to 42 inches and buy a good quality lab stool with a foot rest. A stool forces your to sit upright and not slouch.