Raise your hand if you predicted this post was going to follow the previous one. Great job, gold star. Take a 100m victory lap as a reward. Sitting and standing are what we do for the majority of our waking hours. Between those two, the majority of us will spend time sitting much more than standing. But guess what!? You can cultivate the skill of standing and take that directly into the skill of sitting and find biomechanical success. Joy!
First, let’s examine what happens to us biomechanically when we sit without being conscious.
- Gluts shut off
- Hip flexors shorten
- Hamstrings shorten
- Feet turn off
- Knees buckle inward
- Pelvic floor shuts off
- Transverse abdominus shuts off
- Abdominal wall disengages
- Thoracic spine hunches
- Thoracic hunch causes lumbar hunch
- Anterior cervical spinal curve exaggerates
- Posterior neck muscles tighten
- Anterior neck muscles turn off
- Shoulders droop forward
- Shoulders hang off the rotator cuffs and weaken them through excessive tension
- Humerus internally rotates
Holy moly! You’re basically a slug! A disengaged mass of bones and tissue barely able to hold itself up against gravity let alone function at high capacity! The kicker: you spend the majority of your day in some derivative of this position. Every second you spend in this position teaches your body to stay in that position with less effort. Let’s wake up! Let’s end that with a little awareness and attention. Instead of trying to sit tall out of a bad position, let’s use the “skill of standing” to lower ourselves down into a good one.
Stand with skill as we discussed in the previous post. Now sit down on your chair and see what happens. Read through the list above and see if the EXACT OPPOSITE things are occurring all the way down the line. How difficult is it to stay in this good position for long periods of time?
When you sit for long periods in a chair, you’re teaching your body how to hold the position you're in with every passing second. Therefore it’s imperative that we develop a good sitting position and view sitting as a skill to master.
Sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the floor is not the only way to sit. In eastern cultures people sit by squatting. The “3rd world squat” as it’s become popularly known on the internet these days is one of the best examples of function fitness in action.
Squatting low is not a bad position to be in, not being able to squat low is a bad position to be in. The angles represented in the ankle, knee and hip while in a deep squat are enough to validate the position as a mobility tool. But to express those angles with an upright spine; that’s a skill too!
Stand with skill again. Now start to squat down low and retain all components of standing tall with skill while you sink into a deep squat. Observe what happens. How difficult is it to keep your spine up? How difficult is it to maintain good thoracic spine and shoulder position? Does your pelvic floor and transverse abdominis want to shut off? Are you glutes disengaging? How difficult is it to stay in this good position for long periods of time?
It’s almost impossible to create the necessary stability in the hips required to keep your spine upright without external rotation of the femur. Yoga knows this, that’s why “they” developed lotus pose. Lotus pose in yoga is a way of achieving stability in your hips almost automatically, provided you have the flexibility to get into it. So if you’re sitting for long periods of time in meditation that require you to disassociate with the body, lotus pose uses external rotation of the femur to wind up your hip socket into a nice tight stable ball so you can get your “om shanti” on.
However you sit, make sure it’s in a good position. Keep working on the skill of standing because that exact same biomechanical architecture applies to sitting. Use the checklist above and make sure you’re doing exactly the opposite of what each line says. When sitting for prolonged periods of time switch which position you’re in about once every 6 minutes. If you’re working at an office, try using an object that has no arm rests or back. This will force you to learn how to stay upright in a stable position, and will also give you more sitting options to choose from when you change your sitting position every 6 minutes.
