How to Improve Your Posture | Dr. Kelly Starrett & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | Define posture for me, because I think that's a really great place to start, right?

00:00:05.040 | Yeah.

00:00:06.040 | I can define bad posture as when you catch yourself in a reflection and you realize,

00:00:09.800 | "Wow, I'm starting to look more like a C than a not."

00:00:14.000 | That's so great.

00:00:15.000 | The question is, is that a matter of aesthetics or pain?

00:00:18.160 | Well, certainly for me, it's not pain, but, you know, I notice that unless I pay attention

00:00:28.720 | to my posture while sitting, unless I do, you know, like bridge my fingers together

00:00:34.240 | and pull my chin back a few times a day, that I'm just naturally starting to tip over forward

00:00:39.600 | towards my text messages that aren't even in my hands right now.

00:00:42.540 | And I think this is, you know, the younger generation, I mean, now that I'm 49, I can

00:00:47.960 | talk like that, right?

00:00:48.960 | I mean, it's striking.

00:00:49.960 | Were you born in the 1900s?

00:00:51.960 | They are.

00:00:52.960 | Late 1900s?

00:00:53.960 | Yeah, exactly.

00:00:54.960 | And I think they're starting to look like they're shaped like a C. And I'm a big believer

00:00:59.800 | in people, especially men, doing neck work.

00:01:03.160 | I feel like if you especially-

00:01:04.960 | How about especially people doing neck work?

00:01:07.080 | Yeah.

00:01:08.080 | Well, here's the thing.

00:01:09.080 | Anytime, I'm happy to go there with this one, maybe even at the risk of being politically

00:01:13.600 | incorrect.

00:01:14.600 | Anytime I've suggested that women also do neck work, they say no.

00:01:17.640 | You should see my goalie daughter because for every pound stronger your neck is, your

00:01:23.360 | reduction in concussion risk drops huge, a pound.

00:01:28.040 | Thank you.

00:01:29.040 | So we keep the iron neck by the door and she walks in.

00:01:31.480 | And we have a video in our family where she's doing her iron neck training.

00:01:34.600 | She looks at me.

00:01:35.600 | She's like, "Dad, this is why I don't have a boyfriend."

00:01:37.440 | Thank you.

00:01:38.440 | Sorry, Caroline.

00:01:39.440 | But that's the way it goes, right?

00:01:40.440 | Because she's like, "Look at me.

00:01:41.440 | I look like an idiot."

00:01:42.440 | But she loves having a big, strong neck that can take the shot from the ball.

00:01:45.880 | Yeah.

00:01:46.880 | Listen, I wish everyone would train their neck.

00:01:47.880 | I had an accident where I fell off a roof, walked away from it.

00:01:51.840 | My neck was sore, but I heard it and felt it.

00:01:53.960 | And I was like, "Oh, goodness."

00:01:54.960 | But it was actually from skateboarding stuff and falling and that I started training my

00:01:58.720 | neck years ago and realized that, wow, when I train my neck, I'm one of the few people

00:02:03.480 | in my age cohort that doesn't complain about shoulder pain.

00:02:06.640 | Now, maybe I don't have full range of motion, maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong people,

00:02:10.480 | but anytime I see somebody with really broad shoulders where their neck is really inside

00:02:16.040 | of their jawline, it looks like a head was placed on the wrong action figure body, I

00:02:20.000 | just want to go over to them and say, "Listen, A, it's aesthetically ridiculous.

00:02:24.680 | It looks like one of those flip books in the kids where you can change the head, the body,

00:02:28.120 | and the legs to be different animals.

00:02:30.520 | More seriously, it's a hazard because it's your upper spine.

00:02:34.200 | It's clearly not in line with the rest of your strength profile."

00:02:37.220 | And the other one is the more incentive-based thing is, "Hey, listen, if you train your

00:02:40.920 | neck, everything else gets stronger and your brain is going to be safer."

00:02:44.400 | And as a neuroscientist, I usually listen to the last piece.

00:02:46.960 | Love it.

00:02:47.960 | Love it.

00:02:48.960 | I'm so glad we're talking about this.

00:02:49.960 | When I do bridges, I know that it can be risky with tongue in the roof of my mouth, I do

00:02:54.400 | bridges to the back, and then I do have a four-way neck machine or I use a plate.

00:02:58.160 | Jeff Cavalier has got a great video of how to do this that we can link to, how to do

00:03:01.480 | it safely.

00:03:02.480 | You got to close the chain by having a hand on the ground, this kind of thing to do it

00:03:05.160 | safely.

00:03:06.160 | But I've just found that neck work also serves posture.

00:03:10.720 | Posture serves the ability to make eye contact when you have those things we call conversations

00:03:15.280 | with people in real life.

00:03:17.200 | And I do think these things stack up to, we won't call it like psychological confidence,

00:03:21.640 | but the ability to meet somebody, like firm handshake, you're not trying to crush the

00:03:24.480 | other person's hand, look people in the eye, stand up straight, whatever your height.

00:03:28.500 | These things really matter in subtle ways or not so subtle ways.

00:03:33.240 | I think that I do feel like, yes, that the younger generation and the older generation,

00:03:38.520 | they kind of drop out of certain elements of life.

00:03:42.180 | If you're looking down at the ground or your phone all the time, you can't look people

00:03:44.920 | in the eye.

00:03:45.920 | You're posturally not right, you're in pain, you're not as strong as you could be.

00:03:49.680 | I mean, these things stack up to being like in an aquarium full of fish.

00:03:55.640 | You're becoming the fish in the background that's like, it was kind of sickly and the

00:03:59.760 | other fish are getting all the good stuff.

00:04:02.600 | If you define posture as like the Latin word root is position.

00:04:08.360 | So what we're really saying is I have good position, I have bad position.

00:04:13.160 | One of the ways I think we've lost the narrative a little bit is we try to give people these

00:04:19.960 | extrinsic cues to correct their posture, shoulders back and down, check your tent.

00:04:24.080 | So all of a sudden you're like, well, when am I going to be a human being?

00:04:26.560 | How do I practice this when I'm doing a complex skill?

00:04:29.600 | So the organization of your body, the organization of your spine particularly, really is a reflection

00:04:35.300 | of your movement habits, your behaviors, your self-identity.

00:04:38.320 | There's a lot of things in there, right?

00:04:40.280 | You didn't get the job.

00:04:41.840 | You won the, you got the number from Juliette.

00:04:44.280 | Or you're sleep deprived even, or, and I'm going to call myself out because people are

00:04:48.360 | going to do it.

00:04:49.360 | There are many times on this podcast when I go and I look at the, because I do listen

00:04:51.840 | to the podcast, try and see places I can improve, et cetera.

00:04:55.520 | And I'll be like, wow, my posture, I'm like hunched over.

00:04:58.080 | And I think to myself, and I'll go and I look-

00:04:59.080 | You're just reflecting my posture.

00:05:00.600 | No, no.

00:05:01.600 | And I track my sleep.

00:05:02.600 | So, you know, I'll go back and look and I'll be like, yeah, I wasn't sleeping as well those

00:05:05.080 | days or whatever it is, right?

00:05:07.240 | I mean, I think that we're, we are all guilty of not paying enough attention to our posture.

00:05:11.320 | So what we can do is we could define posture as there is a median range of the joint positioning

00:05:20.560 | where we simultaneously have most access to our physiology, right?

00:05:24.520 | And I'll explain that a little more, but also those shapes aren't associated with increased

00:05:29.480 | pain risk and increased injury risk, which is real.

00:05:33.140 | The research does bear that, that there are positions and shapes that lead to less effective

00:05:39.200 | movement and are more likely to experience pain.

00:05:41.760 | It's probabilistic, it's not guaranteed, there's more likely.

00:05:46.360 | So one of the things that I think you could understand is, hey, do you want to have access

00:05:51.680 | to all of the machinery?

00:05:54.000 | So go ahead and slouch.

00:05:55.560 | Go ahead with me.

00:05:56.560 | And then just turn over your shoulder.

00:05:57.640 | How far can you turn?

00:05:58.640 | Yeah, not very far.

00:05:59.640 | Now watch this.

00:06:00.640 | Get into a position where you take a huge breath.

00:06:01.640 | Get into the biggest position where you take the biggest breath.

00:06:04.960 | Okay, so that's a pretty rocking shape.

00:06:07.840 | Now turn your head, it goes further.

00:06:10.700 | So by you being cued, can you adopt a shape, an organization of your trunk that allows

00:06:18.400 | you to ventilate a little bit more effectively?

00:06:20.680 | You completely change and reorganize your structure, which led to an improvement in

00:06:26.040 | output.

00:06:27.640 | So when I'm working with people, there's only two things I really can wrap my head around.

00:06:31.920 | One is, do you have normative range of motion?

00:06:34.360 | Yes or no?

00:06:35.360 | Do you have the tools we have to restore that and improve that?

00:06:37.800 | And does that expression give us greater biomotor output?

00:06:41.000 | Because those are objective measures.

00:06:42.360 | When biomotor output, I mean range of motion, force production, power, I see that I can

00:06:48.040 | express the physiology in a unique way that makes me more effective.

00:06:53.160 | And that is why you'll see suddenly we have this definition that is maintaining the physiology

00:06:58.080 | and aspects.

00:06:59.360 | I'm not going to have as good shoulder flexion with my arm over my head as when I'm sitting

00:07:03.600 | up taller or in a position where I can take a bigger breath.

00:07:07.160 | And I think that's what's really great because that gets us away from good posture, bad posture

00:07:11.040 | into, hey, that position doesn't serve you as well in these circumstances.

00:07:16.200 | And in this position, I'm working with the pararescue team in the Air Force.

00:07:21.400 | The number one reason they were having back injuries was getting the litter out of the

00:07:26.520 | helicopter because they have a litter, the soldiers there with all their gear on, they've

00:07:31.960 | got to lift from a totally weird flexed position, right?

00:07:36.240 | And this just turns out it's not a really effective posture, position, shape that transfers

00:07:41.520 | to handle these higher loads.

00:07:43.360 | So what do we do?

00:07:44.360 | We work on the range of motion.

00:07:45.360 | We give them skills to try to organize more effectively in that shape.

00:07:49.160 | And lo and behold, we can reduce injury risk and injury incident in those soldiers, right?

00:07:55.460 | So what we're always thinking about here is let's get away from good and bad and posture

00:08:00.080 | doesn't matter.

00:08:01.320 | And it also doesn't matter at low load, low speed.

00:08:04.480 | And I want to be very clear about that.

00:08:06.880 | So you can get away with murder at low velocities and low speeds, but speed kills.

00:08:12.640 | Oh, everyone's fine.

00:08:14.000 | But when that speed wobble starts to happen, we start to see greater likelihood of deflection

00:08:20.320 | from posture.

00:08:21.560 | Your abs don't work as effectively.

00:08:23.440 | You can't create the same intra-abdominal pressure, right?

00:08:26.240 | Check, check, check, check, check.

00:08:27.820 | So that's why we always are saying, hey, is this true that you're saying under high load,

00:08:32.660 | high speed when there's consequence?

00:08:34.700 | Because maybe this set of conditions works under these conditions, but it doesn't work

00:08:39.700 | across all conditions.

00:08:40.940 | And for me, I'm trying to take the best information I have working in sports and performance and

00:08:45.720 | trying to transmute that to my family, transmute that to my neighborhood and to the kids I'm

00:08:49.500 | working with.

How to Improve Your Posture | Dr. Kelly Starrett & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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