If you have been training with a PT at the Better Body Group for a while I’m sure you’ve noticed how much all the trainers are sticklers for proper positioning or posture, especially spinal positioning and especially in the big compounds like squats and deadlifts.
This is because a neutral spine allows you to distribute weight and force evenly across your discs and vertebrae. Now this is important when training but actually just as important in day to day life. I’m sure you have heard stories of people who bent over to pick up a light object and end up doing there back in, this is because usually unless it’s a barbell, we just bend over into a droopy mess to pick up things from the floor instead of hinging at hips.
I’m not saying this because picking up a pen off the floor with great form will make gains or burn calories! But it’s a great way of staying mobile and using a day to day task to “grease the groove” for proper movement and create good movement habits.
If you don’t use it you lose it!
These little stretches throughout the day won’t increase your flexibility but will maintain what you have and will help to counter all the sitting we do. Also if a proper hip hinge with a neutral spine becomes engrained enough you will find it will become your default movement pattern for bending over and picking things up and stop you from having endless back ache/twinges.
I’ve included pictures of people that have probably never been taught to hip hinge but do it instinctively. The likelihood is that these people have not sat in chairs for hours on end and therefore not lost awareness of their body position like most of us have.
So next time you do your laces, take care of your back, don’t be a droopy mess… hip hinge.
Jas Sandhu
Better Body Group, Sevenoaks
