Even perfect posture can cause pain. It’s not what position we are working in. It’s how long we are working in that exact same position. Because keeping muscles chronically activated causes repetitive strain and overuse injuries.
It’s not uncommon to experience discomfort or pain when we first try to sit or stand up straight. This can make fixing your posture feel counterintuitive. It may lead to confusion about out whether good posture is really healthy, or if it is doing more harm than good.
We need to understand that the pain is usually temporary, but can still lead to long term issues. This issues are caused by muscle imbalances, inactivity, or incorrect posture.
Posture correction can help encourage us to fix our posture, despite the pain.
In this article, I’m going to talk about why good posture hurts and how to improve posture without causing pain.
Why Does Good Posture Hurt
I’m going to explain where my pain was coming from. I’ll also talk about how understanding the causes helped me clear misconceptions, then come up with solutions that helped fix my poor posture.
This article can help you understand what good posture actually means and why correcting it can feel uncomfortable at first.
What Is Good Posture
Posture is the position we hold our bodies in. Good posture allows me to have:
- minimal pain
- good work productivity
- good mental clarity
- good energy levels
But good posture is dynamic, not rigid, or locked in place. I don’t want to overuse the same postural muscles all day. So, working in different positions throughout the day is a key to maintain good posture.
Good posture also involves neutral spine positioning. As well as keeping the natural curves of the neck, mid back, and lower back intact.
Balanced muscle engagement is very important to me, rather than forcing shoulder muscles back, or tightening the core muscles constantly.
Can Good Posture Cause Back Pain
Yes! This was very true in my personal experience.
Good posture itself doesn’t cause the pain. But holding that exact same position for long periods of time does.
Changing posture positions exposes weaknesses and previously inactive muscles. It also gives postural muscles a break. Because sitting overworks certain muscles by constantly supporting the torso. But standing takes load off those muscles, giving them a break, by putting more of the load onto my legs.
But I’m careful when switching positions between sitting and standing, because sudden posture changes can stress joints and soft tissues not adapted to the load.
Why Does Having Good Posture Hurt
Muscles get tight, pulling on tendons, causing tendonitis.
When working at a computer, the first bad thing that happens is my muscles get tight. Those muscles eventually pull on tendons, which connect muscles to bones (often at a joint). Once the load gets extreme, the tendons get inflamed, causing pain. This is the main reason I was motivated to improve posture at computer back in 2011.
Muscles typically have more blood flow than tendons. So I feel pain in my tendons, before I even realized that the connected muscle is tight.
Underused muscles becoming sore when activated
Computer posture causes me to chronically overuse some muscles. But the rest of my muscles are being chronically underused. A key to improving your posture is maintaining an even balance of muscle activation.
When these underused muscles become activated all of a sudden, eventually they get sore quickly, because they aren’t used to being activated.
Increased awareness of tension in the neck, shoulders, and lower back
My lower back often had pain from sitting. But that’s only the location of the pain. It’s not where the cause of my pain was located.
Any time I rest my hands on something (keyboard and mouse) for long periods of time, my shoulders naturally rotate internally. This causes a chain reaction of excessive tension, from my shoulders all the way down to my lower back.
My lower back pain from sitting was caused by my internal shoulder rotation, which caused me to slouch forward. This also caused me to not sit with a neutral spine. The natural curves in my spine either flattened out or became too curved.
Nervous system adjustment to new positioning
Sitting in an office environment comes with its own high amount of mental stress. And adjusting to a new position causes physical stress.
Any time I’m under more physical stress, it leaves less mental energy for my day. We’re only allowed a certain amount of energy per day, to be divided up between physical and mental. Anytime I take on more physical stress, it takes a toll on my nervous system.
Fatigue from holding posture instead of moving naturally
Postural muscles are those that support part of our body. For example, this can be any muscle that supports my torso, head, arms, etc. When working at a computer for long periods of time, these postural muscles get chronically overused. This not only causes fatigue of those muscles, but throughout my entire body.
How To Maintain Good Posture Without Being Hurt
I switch between different working position, multiple times a day.
Sitting isn’t the only enemy here. Working in the same position for long periods is. If I go from sitting all day, to standing all day, I’m still going to have computer pain. But it’ll just be different injuries compared to those caused by sitting. That’s why I rotate between sitting, standing, and reclined in my day to day life.
Focus on posture awareness, not constant correction.
I visualize my body swaying in the air slightly, like a tree blowing in the wind. I don’t want my posture to be stiff and rigid, like a brick building. That’s a classic recipe for repetitive strain and overuse injuries.
Constantly focusing on posture correction is important, but it’s not the only variable necessary to correct your posture.
Use movement breaks rather than holding one position.
Micro breaks are an important part of my computer ergonomics process. They allow me to increase my blood circulation in all my muscles, regardless if they are overused or underused when I’m working at my computer.
Strengthen postural muscles gradually instead of forcing alignment
In my opinion, the 2 most important postural muscles (when sitting) are the hips and glutes. That’s why I focused on hip and glute strengthening exercises when I’m weightlifting.
Some of my favorites are kettlebell swings, deadlift, glute drive, and glute press, and glute kickbacks. These exercises have remarkably improved my good posture for sitting at the computer.
Incorporate ergonomic adjustments for sitting and standing.
My free eBook contains 3 ergonomic adjustments in my computer posture process. It’s titled 3 Ways to Improve Computer Posture Immediately! These 3 adjustments are easy to understand and easy to implement. They both apply, regardless if we’re working in a sitting or standing position.
This eBook talks about the 3 most painful computer posture mistakes I used to make. Then, it explains how to improve posture while sitting at computer, by fixing those 3 mistakes.
Best Exercises For Good Posture
Yoga cactus pose (while laying flat on the floor)
One of the most chronic issues I had from poor computer posture was excessive internal rotation of my shoulders. An average physical therapist would tell you to go do a door stretch, or a towel stretch. But those just didn’t move the needled for me.
I needed a stretch that was low-intensity and long-duration. Because we hold a keyboard and mouse 8 hours a day. This issue won’t get fixed with a 30 second stretch.
So I started doing a yoga cactus stretch, while laying flat on the floor. It reverses my internal shoulder rotation, while allowing me to relax, and focus on my breathing, for long periods of time.
Yoga stick stretch
Holding a keyboard and mouse all day, combined with staring at a monitor in front of us, causes us to naturally slouch forward. No matter how conscious I was of this, I’d always tend to slouch slightly. Especially as my stressful day went on into the afternoon.
My favorite way to reverse this slouching forward was to do this stretch (shown below) with a yoga stick (not paid promotion). It puts me in the exact counterbalanced position I need to be in, to reverse the damage that slouching forward does to me. It activates my back muscles in the opposite direction. And it also lengthens my chest muscles, which get shortened from sitting at a computer.
Upper back and shoulder strengthening
Using a keyboard and mouse cause excessive internal shoulder rotation. At the same time, it made my upper back and external shoulder rotation weaker.
My favorite exercises to strengthen my upper back and shoulders are overhead squats and olympic snatch movements.
Core stabilization rather than crunch based training
My favorite way to stabilize my core is to take hot yoga classes. I like the hot temperature in the room, because it increases my breathing, sweat, and my blood flow. I’m too old to do yoga in a room temperature room. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be beneficial, but I’m saying hot yoga is a much better use of my time (at my age, late forties).
A common misconception is that the core is just made up of ab muscles. When it’s actually made up of abs, pelvic floor, diaphragm, back, and hips. I want to strengthen all of these. I don’t want to neglect any (which would be common in crunch based training).
Hip mobility exercises to reduce lower back strain
I used to sit with my office chair too low. This caused my hip level to be lower than my knees. Which caused tight, shortened, compressed hip muscles.
Everything in our bodies is connected, whether directly or indirectly. This is why it’s important to strengthen and lengthen my hip muscles. Because they are so closely connected to the lower back.
Thanks for your interest in computer posture.
Todd Bowen – Computer Posture Correction and Pain-Free Ergonomics: For Office Workers Who Want to Delete Their Sitting Pain
P.S. If you liked this article, you’ll love the digital store I just published.
🙏 Thank you for supporting my work. -Todd