Posture and Body Mechanics

How is your posture when you are lifting a box or sitting on the couch watching TV? Body mechanics is actually an important concept when it comes to posture. Several people experience back pain throughout their life and that could be due to bad posture, faulty body mechanics, lack of exercise, and stressful situations. A few statistical facts that I found interesting, are 80% of the adult population will have low back pain at some point in their life. Along with 90% of the time the low back pain will reoccur. Typically the peak age for this to happen is around 30-50 years old. One fact that stood out to me, is that 90% of the population has bulging discs. How crazy is that!? When it comes to assisting a client, it is very important they practice proper body mechanics. We want to prevent them from having disc injury (bulging/herniation), reoccurring pain, back issues that limit their ability to work (which can be costly) and that can limit them from doing their ADLs. 

There are two ways I would teach my client in an intervention, one being the slouch-overcorrect technique to correct posture. For this exercise, you lean forward by taking your arms down your legs and creating "bad posture," then slide arms back up the legs and straighten the spine into the best posture position. Secondly, I would have them stand frequently and do back extensions. I would also recommend that they place a pillow or towel roll behind them, if they don't have a ergonomic seat, to help with posture.