What is "postural training"?
Postural training exercises have really gotten a lot of attention lately. Finally people are starting to understand that we can't just exercise the big muscles; the beach muscles, your chest, your biceps, and maybe your back. There are smaller stabiliser muscles that need to be activated first. When these stabiliser muscles are activated they help hold your body in the proper alignment while you're doing the other larger movements (what are called your gross movements) over multiple axes and planes of motion. So, if we don't use the stabilizer muscles or initiate them and train them, our posture may not be as good as it should be. Also through trauma, accident, and habitual behaviour, our posture becomes distorted over time. Everyone has postural discrepancies whether they think they do or not. By doing these exercises you create a neutral pelvis, your chin won't jut front and back, and your shoulder won't be elevated or depressed. When you do these things everything else becomes better. Think of it like this: you wouldn't build a house on a shaky foundation or one that is built unevenly, so why should we work on heavy strength training exercises if our foundation is not in place?
