StrongPosture®
Why Posture Matters
Your posture is how your body balances. No matter how distorted your posture looks, it is balanced. Otherwise, you would fall over. What people call “bad posture” is actually “adapted posture”. It’s the best your body can do with the combination of tight and weak muscles, shortened ligaments, and compressed discs which it is trying to balance. Almost always, it can be improved. Usually, it can be improved a lot. Improved, strengthened posture has many scientifically proven benefits:
Posture, balance, and movement are intimately connected. When one weakens, they all weaken. On the other hand, if you strengthen one you strengthen all. You are either in a downward spiral or an upward spiral. The job of the chiropractor is to reverse the downward spiral.
This is accomplished by first doing a thorough examination, then designing a comprehensive plan of correction.
The first step is to determine localized areas that are not functioning properly. These are called motion unit fixations and can exist in one of three phases:
- Phase 1. The deep spinal muscles that stabilize and allow small movements of individual joints tighten.
- Phase 2. The ligaments that hold the joint together shrink as does the connective tissue that holds the muscle fibers together.
- Phase 3. Because of continued pressure, disc and joint cartilage breaks down and bones change their shape and bone spurs form.
Our StrongPosture® Program
Balance
Alignment
Motion
Those are the three aspects of normal function that the StrongPosture® Program addresses. They are interdependent. If one is weak, they all weaken. On the other hand, if you strengthen one, you strengthen all. The StrongPosture® Program is designed to strengthen and normalize all three. (The StrongPosture® Program was developed by Dr. Steven Weiniger, an internationally renown posture specialist who has spent his long career studying the effects of posture and how to improve it.)
Consider this: Our bodies are meant to move. You begin with a certain posture. Every step requires balancing on one leg. If your posture is distorted it will affect your weight distribution. That will in turn affect your balance. In order to keep from falling over you will contract muscles in an abnormal pattern which will affect the way you move. You can see it in some older people who begin each step with hunched posture, which makes it more difficult to balance which causes them to take smaller, unsteady steps.
The StrongPosture® Program is a set of quick, simple daily exercises that will improve the way you stand, sit, and move. It will make you more attractive, less prone to injury, help you out of chronic pain, give you more energy, improve athletic and other physical performance, help you age more gracefully and maintain your independence, and even add more years to your life.
If that seems hard to believe, look at it from the opposite direction. Slumped, distorted posture is certainly less attractive. There is no doubt that putting abnormal stress and weight on joints, ligaments, and muscles will set them up for injury. Keeping pressure on painful areas will certainly cause them to hurt more and go on hurting. If your alignment is off, your performance will be off as well. It drains energy to stand, move or even sit in distorted posture. Finally, just take a look at an older person with erect posture and one with hunched over, distorted posture. Which one would you rather be?
What It Is
The StrongPosture® program is a set of simple exercises that you do daily, like brushing your teeth.
These exercises will strengthen and correct each of the 3 aspects of strong posture. They are divided into lessons within a 7 week course, taught by Dr. Weiniger, that you log into online. Then, depending on your condition, you will meet with Dr. Galzarano at least once a week, either online or at his office. (Obviously, if you need hands-on care, you will need to go to the office.) During those sessions, Dr. Galzarano will observe you doing the exercises in order to make corrections and additions to ensure that you get the most benefit from the program.
Some of the conditions that improve with stronger posture are:
- Back Pain
- Neck Pain
- Sciatica
- Poor Balance
- Pain and/or tingling down the arms
- Tension Headaches
- Digestive Problems
- Breathing Problems
- Looking older than you are
How It Works
The “3 Cs”
- Contraction – Muscles move joints by contracting. Weak muscles cannot contract well due to lack of energy. Stiff muscles cannot either because they are already partially contracted. Strong muscles will do all the work and eventually fatigue. This is what sets you up for pain, injury, and degenerated joints and discs. The StrongPosture® exercises, by moving the body in proper alignment, automatically strengthen what is weak and stretch what is stiff.
- Connection – Ligaments, tendons, fascia (thin layers of tissue that hold together muscle fibers and connect organs to your frame) and bones will eventually mold themselves to your posture. In soft tissues it’s called “creep”, in bones spurring and remolding.
- Control- Your brain and nerves control all body functions. If your brain resets itself to chronically distorted posture by causing some muscles to remain contracted while others are allowed to weaken, that posture will eventually feel normal to you. Those people I mentioned who are walking around hunched forward and leaning backward and sideways feel like they are actually straight.
Most patients seek chiropractic care because of pain, either acute (new) or chronic. Sometimes the pain is due to a definite injury such as an auto accident, a work related accident, a fall, or an athletic injury. Most of the time, however, the pain is triggered by some ordinary movement such as reaching into a cabinet or picking up something off the floor or simply bending over or getting up out of a chair or out of bed. Obviously, in those cases, the real cause of the problem was brewing long before the incident that triggered the pain.
Our bodies are physical structures like bridges and buildings. There are highly trained professionals who periodically inspect buildings and bridges because if they deviate even slightly from their most stable alignment there is a danger of collapse. Our bodies, on the other hand, because they have an innate intelligence, adapt rather than collapse. Stand on a busy street corner some day and watch the people walk by. You will notice that some walk perfectly erect while others are leaning slightly back or forward or to one side or another. Sometimes this is due to old injuries but most often to the posture they assume at their desk or car or while doing heavy physical labor. Some muscles stiffen, others weaken, ligaments tighten or overstretch as their bodies find a way to balance themselves as best they can. Over time, joints lose their normal mobility and bones actually change their shape to accommodate the abnormal pressure they have been bearing for years. The more one’s posture deviates from the ideal, the more prone one is to injury, premature aging, and chronic pain.
The Strong Posture program is designed to give you something that you can do IMMEDIATELY to begin to reverse that unhealthy trend. It is a good habit that you can perform daily in just a few minutes a day that carries over into everything that you do. It’s nice to have a chiropractor to help you get your body to the point where you can help yourself. The question is: What is the best approach for helping yourself? There are countless exercise routines that you can follow at the gym or on Youtube or at a physical therapy or chiropractic office. However, the Strong Posture program literally gets to the core of proper alignment.
The StrongPosture® Program + Chiropractic Adjustments:
- Gets patients out of pain quickly
- Takes the pressure off irritated joints, muscles, ligaments, and nerves
- Restore as much normal function as possible
- Avoid and delay arthritic degeneration
- Give the patient an easy method to correct and maintain good alignment, balance, and movement on his or her own