On the Importance of Posture
I grew up with both of my parents and grandmother frequently reminding me to stand up straight and relax my knees, and hearing the same from our doctors. This was to help me develop the habit of good posture to protect my spine long term, especially given our family medical history.
Good posture helps with maintaining spinal column health by exercising the core muscles that hold your spine in place, as well as improving blood flow and reducing the strain on your bones and tendons.
For this reason, core exercises or regularly doing exercise that engages your core (the internal muscles that help hold your spine in place) are important for everyone to do. These muscles are also important for maintaining proper form when doing push ups (at any level, from the beginner to advanced push up forms), planks, lunges, and many other exercises where incorrect form can result in long term or systemic injury.
Some good exercises to do that will exercise your core muscle groups are russian twists, bicycles, planks, pull ups, and push ups (Darebee is a great resource for more of these). Exercise methods that engages your core muscle groups (but are not necessarily the focus) are ballet, many forms of coupled dancing, Irish stepdancing, Scottish highland dancing, yoga, many forms of martial arts and their conditioning exercises (tai chi, jiu jitsu, karate, tae kwon do, aikido, and capoeira are some of the first ones that come to mind), swimming, hiking, walking (when you maintain good posture while taking a walk), or even just making it a habit to sit up straight in your chair.
Some ways to exercise your core throughout the day outside of exercising either for the express purpose or as part of your exercise routine is making sure you have good posture when sitting at your desk, table, workspace, or on your couch; when you are standing to talk, work, cook, or in line; or if you are moving from one place to another either by walking or using a wheelchair or any other mobility aids. You can also take breaks to stretch and move while remaining seated as are listed here on Darebee.
If anyone has additional exercises or methods of exercising not listed here, or resources not listed here, please speak up!
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