Youth Posture, A Practice for Success

Hey, I’m Shawn. I want to talk today about Youth Posture. 

Here is a summary incase you aren’t a “reader”

• Kids have terrible posture from a young age due to their habits and school/home environments
• Kids respond very well to posture management
• Kids reported themselves as happier when managing their posture
• Help kids stay out of hunched out positions whenever possible
• Employ ergonomic tools like prism glasses
• Monitor tech use for bad neck positions
• Doesnt take much for kids, 1 or 2 posture exercises can help them a lot

Read the details below…..

I worked as a PE coach from  2018 to 2020 right up through covid. What I noticed as a posture expert, was even in first second grade kids have huge posture problems already. I noticed their activities primarily consist of sitting using their iPads and typing. Activities are not widely varied and dexterity of the body is not required often. Very few kids were playing sports with a group. Very few of them could touch their toes. Basic positions, native mobility is lost. Many of their heads were forward. About 75% of the kids were suffering from any one of the metrics I looked at. It was part of the school’s whole deal that the teachers were all supposed to do research related to their class. I was like, “great. I love research.” I became a teacher so that I would have more time to learn and become an expert.

 I did my routine posture assessments with the children, about 200 kids, on a six-week ongoing basis for the first year. So I did the first time and I was like, wow, this is bad. Kids are suffering. They’re only going to get worse; seems very different from when I was a child. Not that I was very fit. I was pretty sedentary, but you know, many kids were not. So what I did was I started looking at a few key metrics. I rated their pelvic positions, their shoulder positions, head positions, and how far forward they were on their toes. I decided to do an intervention based study. So I did a baseline posture assessment for all the kids. I rated them all on a scale according to those four metrics, and then I did intervention with three posture exercises at the beginning of classes for 2 months. Most kids saw me 3 or 5 times a week and had a middle school group that did not do any popular exercises. I only saw them once a week, so it was a natural control group. 

At the end of a two-month period of the intervention group I did a follow up assessment. Over the 2 months, 63% of their postures improved noticeably. About a quarter improved very very significantly. I was like, Wow, three minutes a few times a week. Big changes in their bodies. They also reported feeling better, some of the kids reported they felt like they could run a hundred miles after they do their exercises. That everything just feels ‘right’. That they felt like they could “do anything.”

Another thing that was apparent was Life Events changing posture. So one student, her dog died in a horrible accident – it showed up in her posture for months. Another student’s parents were getting divorced, its obvious from a simple photo that something is wrong and bother them. Another student had joined an out of school sports team, and first doing really well, and having a great time and you could see their growing confidence and excitement in their posture.

So many things go to and come from your posture and shape your body takes, especially with kids as they are more expressive. I also noticed that it’s easier for younger kids to change and manage their positive older. People and their posture become less immediately pliable the older they get older. Middle school kids may have been working on a dysfunction for 6 or 7 years already, and it becomes more ingrained. Still very changeable. 

 I did a second study,  neither of these were of a quality that I can publish. They both belong to the school also, I have the documents but I really should be showing them to anybody. The second study was a survey with some statistically significant rated questions to measure things, like, overall, confidence, happiness, things like that. And what I I noticed was that kids in the intervention group rated themselves as happy all the time at a 50% greater rate than they did at the beginning of the intervention, and that could have been due to a variety of factors. You know, my class is a pretty small part of their overall life. So it’s hard to say that there’s a direct correlation, but kids rated themselves as happy all the time at a 50% greater rate – which is huge, really big deal. 

So, you know, why not have your kids manage. Their posture is as easy as standing against a wall squeezing, the block pressing on a strap. I made a set of 24, kid, blocks of kids scraps. It took me a couple of afternoons. You get that stuff together for your kid for three or four bucks. Not Difficult, like my previous article talked about how to be more successful in life by manipulating your hormones, through Power posing and posture. Imagine having that benefit through your years, understanding a little bit about how your emotions and positions in your body work and using it to your benefit. My teen years were pretty confusing, something like that would have been really invaluable to my success as a person. I feel pretty great about myself now, but I feel like I got kind of a late start. So who would I be if I started young? Hopefully, I’ll have kids and I’ll be able to find out.

Kid’s posture is suffering. Their activities are suffering, find ways to keep your kid from looking straight down a lot. You could get them some prism glasses, and help them manage their posture for their overall confidence and performance. Doesn’t have to be complicated, a few minutes a day, bear crawl, crab walk, stand on the wall – it can be a fun family activity!

Everybody benefits from managing their posture. Especially kids. Any questions comments. Love talking about this stuff. Please shoot me an e-mail!

Look forward to a kids video on posture!