Good Posture...Gone Bad

... And How Women Fitness Trainees Can Avoid It

You don’t believe it; well, next time when you go to the gym, pay attention to the ever increasing number of bodybuilders’ postures and that’s what you’ll usually see:

Bodybuilder’s upper body bad posture

- Rounded shoulders

- Hunched (kyphotic thoracic back) upper back

- Winging or protracted scapulae (shoulder blades are pulled away to the sides)

Bodybuilder’s lower body bad posture

-Excessive lower back arch

-Everted or pointing outward feet

Bodybuilders and weightlifters’ postures are the consequences of living in two environments; the gym and outside the gym (ordinary everyday life) environments.

I will discuss both environments and how to strive to restore bodybuilders’ postures back to normal modern human posture.

Inside the Gym

Excessive use and focus on developing certain muscles and neglecting the others, that’s it.

Performing excessive chest exercises where it can lead to more internal rotation at the glenohumeral joint subsequently creating one of the famous bodybuilder’s postures; rounded or drooping shoulders. One way to identify rounded shoulders is the palm(s) of your hands are turned and faced back where they should face the side of your hips.

Exercising excessively the latissimus dorsi (V-shaped back muscle) and front shoulder muscles can also lead to the bodybuilder and weightlifter’s postures; the rounded shoulders.

Protraction (winged) or the elevated scapula symptom occurs as a chain reaction because of the above bodybuilders’ postural symptoms and also because of other weak muscles like the serratus anterior and rhomboid muscles.

The same thing happens at or below the equator line so to speak; the hip-flexor group muscles, and the back and front thigh muscles.

Bodybuilders and weightlifters generally are lordotic or have excessive lower back arch because of tight and/or over tasked hip flexor muscles where some of these muscles pull lower back area forward and downward causing the lower back muscles in “flexion mode” to strain and sooner or later an injury can occur. No wonder many bodybuilders injure their lower back area from performing a simple task such as bending down to tie shoe laces.

One more thing about weightlifters and bodybuilders’ lordotic symptom which causes the upper back to lose its S-shape spine and create something close to kyphosis symptoms (another symptom) like the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s or bodybuilders’ posture.

Two of the most occupied resistance apparatus/machines are the bench barbell press and knee extension machine. As many bodybuilders “love to exercise the body parts that they can see” in the mirror so put more focus on the quads (front thigh muscles) which is perfectly fine IF you equally focus on hamstrings (back thigh muscles) the same thing applies for the adductor and abductor of the thigh muscles and the list goes on!

Outside the Gym

What you do outside the gym has more effect on bodybuilder’s posture than what you do inside the gym, for the simple reason that we spend more time doing (or not doing for that matter) daily regular tasks outside the gym rather than inside.

Most of the bodybuilders, weightlifters, and people in all walks of life presently have limited movements, activities, and lead a more sedentary lifestyle; such as sitting at work, and sitting while using various means of transportation (cars, trains, and buses), and lounging at home and so on.

The sitting position can tighten and shorten the hip-flexor muscles and the more you do it the more overactive these pelvic muscles become. Afterwards, the hip flexor muscles can lead to excessive arch in the lower back area and start to cause pain and make you vulnerable to injuries.

The hip flexor muscles can also lead to bodybuilder’s bad posture and other misalignments will surface because certain muscles start to take over other muscles tasks (called compensating muscles) so, some of these muscles are working overtime and others are take a long vacation.

One of the other negatives of tight and short hip-flexors is they can externally rotate the lower legs (like ducks’ feet) where they should be pointing straight forward; and this can disrupt the smooth movement of the knee and ankle joints and can eventually cause damage.

Restoring Bodybuilders’ Posture

It’s never too late to fix your dysfunctional posture whether you’re a bodybuilder, weightlifter, or an individual whom is interested in correcting her/his posture just for the sake of a healthy body and being pain free with an ultimately happy life.

But it can be a difficult and long journey or the other way around can be easy and take a fairly short time to fix the bad posture; it really depends on how severe your condition is, however, it’s worth every minute of it.

Bodybuilders in particular though have a double-edged sword when it comes to restoring their postures because they either reinforce their bad postures in the gym through selective, limited, and repetitive exercise movements OR they can restore bodybuilders’ posture to become normal and healthy through performing corrective and wide range of exercises to create a balanced and aligned postural body.

Recommended Exercise Movements to Realign Bodybuilder’s Posture

- Performing horizontal pushing (ex., barbell bench press) and pulling (rowing movements) exercises equally. Also, if you have been training your chest first for the last 10 years then maybe it’s a good idea to start your workout with rowing exercises rather than always performing chest exercises first, and the same thing applies to the other muscles.

- Performing vertical pushing (ex., dumbbell overhead press) and pulling (pull-ups) exercises equally.

- Because more than ever bodybuilders have excessive arch at the region (lordosis), this bodybuilder’s postural symptom causes the six pack abs(abdominius rectus) to become weak, so exercise it.

- Maintain balance between the hamstring/glutes (ex., deep-jumping, step-ups) and quads (performing squats to knee level and lower).

- Also perform one leg balance exercises and observe which leg needs more improvement and prioritize it.

- Core exercises are a must! Every bodybuilder and weightlifter needs to strengthen the deeper muscles around your midsection by performing exercises like, hand bridges, elbow bridges, elbow side bridges, wood chops (all kinds), and Vacuum exercise.

These exercises will help to strengthen the midsection core muscles like the transversus abdominis, external and internal obliques (love handles area), stomach muscles (six pack abs muscles), and the postural muscles.

Yoga is Good for Bodybuilder’s Posture

I know this is a tough sell, particularly for hardcore bodybuilders and weightlifters, but still, I have to tell if you want to test how healthy and normal your joints range of motion are, then you should also perform yoga poses with a strict form and see how normal-flexible you are.

And puhleeeeeaze forget the notion that yoga is for chicks or your estrogen will increase and testosterone will decrease, well it might happen a little bit but nothing major to worry about…Just kidding.

Recommended yoga poses/stretches include but not limited to:

- Hip flexor stretches (very important to stretch your hip flexor muscles because most likely they are tight and are the major reasons causing the exaggerated inward curve at the lumbar back area)

- Downward Facing Dog

- Cats and Dog

- The Cobra

- The Triangle

- Forward Bend

- Twisting Poses (ex., supine and sitting twists)

This might seem a lot but it’s not really! Your workout session probably will increase 5-10 minutes, it all depends on priorities and how severe your bodybuilder’s posture is, but without a doubt it’s worth the extra minutes that you’ll invest in fixing your posture and eliminating or preventing any future injuries and pain.