Improve your Posture in Minutes, a research review

In 2018-2020 I was a PE coach at a Private School here in Austin, Texas. I had the privilege of making my own curriculum and doing research as I pleased. You can be sure we had a LOT of fun, and developed an excellent sense of our bodies and how to use them. It was maybe the funnest job I ever had, but in some ways the most challenging as well. 

Anyways, so I did posture assessments for all 200 kids every 4 to 6 weeks What I found initially was pretty appalling. I used a visual assessment with a 5 point posture inspection and rating system. 

• After 2nd grade, pretty much every child’s posture suffers. 
• Forward head, majority, 
• Pelvic imbalance in more than half. 
• Many kids exhibiting limited mobility – can’t get close to their toes etc. 
• Recent major life events, and injuries can be seen in the posture. 

I decided to try and intervention study. I used 1st to 5th grade as the intervention group, and middle school as the control group. 140 vs. 60 students respectively. 

The intervention group did 3 posture activities at the beginning of each class ( 2 or 3 times a week depending on the grade). So roughly 7 or 10 minutes per week. 

We did the intervention for 6 weeks and re-examined the posture of everyone. It was not research I could or would publish so the I didn’t calculate the statistical significance. However, the results were pretty astounding. 

Roughly ½ of the intervention group improved very significantly, constituting 2 or more rating point increases on 2 or more of the 5 point inspection with very noticeable visible changes. 64% of the intervention group improved in the 5 point scale at least 1 point in 1 area, but often more. A small portion of the intervention group got worse, often associated with parental divorce, dog problems etc. Some just got worse, and Im not really able to comment on it much. An even smaller portion stayed the same. 

In the control group, inevitably a majority stayed the same, with a small number improving or getting worse. 

Some other things I noticed:

• The older the children were, the slower their posture changed. 
• The 2 vs 3 times a week, didn’t seem to make a big difference – the stimulation is there, producing a result. 

This leads me to say that Posture management is a huge benefit for a small time investment. Managing posture is a skill that will benefit all, and for the best mobility and performance outcomes – it should be introduced early, probably as soon as screens were. 

This school used Ipads for almost everything, and the shape of the children reflected that. 

I performed a 2nd study, using statistically significant survey questions pulled from google scholar. I had the students fill out the survey, followed by a 6 week intervention, and a follow up survey. 

This one was not a very eye opening study, most of the questions see a shift in answers. HOWEVER, the children rated themselves as “Happy all the time” at a 50% higher rate at the end of the study, as opposed to any other answer. Not statistically significant, but still pretty cool! Your posture does reflect how you feel and who you think you are, and here is one small data point reflecting that. 

Some REAL, excellent research on posture has been done by Amy Cuddy, you can find her on Ted Talk and throughout the media.

Thanks for reading! Now manage your posture!