Sunday 2 November 2014

The Captain Morgan pose

Drinking Captain Morgan's rum is cool, but do you know what's even cooler?...standing like him!



A high 80% of the clientele I work with have desk jobs so I'm always focusing on counteracting the detrimental effects of sitting. So what about the other 20% that spend the day standing? Long periods of standing incorrectly can be just as harmful to the spine as sitting can. Look at the images below. On the left is a shot of the spine in neutral which is how it should be ideally. After standing for a number of hours we tend to see an overextension fault of the lumbar spine (middle image). This is bad news for the lower back. 


The reason this happens is the muscles such as the glutes and core that play an important role in midline stabilisation start to fatigue. You can save the lumbar spine when this happens by elevating a foot onto a box/ step/ shelf/ dumbell/ keg etc. (right image) This allows the lumbar spine to return to optimum positioning. Now I'm not suggesting you stand like this all day, but every so often adopt the Captain Morgan pose for a few minutes each leg to save your spine.

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