"You know better!"

You know better.

You can hear the commands in the back of your mind.

You’ve heard it so many times that you now say it to others.

It’s been drilled into your conscience by your parents, grandparents, school teachers, and even some strangers.

So why is it that so many of us cannot sit up straight or stop slouching at work all day? Why is sitting in pristine posture so difficult?

I walk into my front door after a long day of work and instantly enter parent mode with my two sons. “Stop taking toys out of Alex’s hand!” and “Stop pushing Carter!” are now trite expressions at my house. At just two and three years old, I might expect too much from them. My wife, who happens to be a first-grade teacher, echoes back from another room, “Focus on the positive behavior!”

There’s a relatively new style of parenting that was not the norm when I was a kid. My wife learned it as positive discipline in one of her grad classes. Ideally, we want to focus on the good behaviors and not criticize the negative. It makes sense to me in theory, and then I regretfully chirp, “Boys, stop jumping on the couch right now!”

Water the grass, not the weeds.

So why do us experts in movement expect a change while harping on the negative behavior? As a physical therapist, I can’t even mention the word “posture” without a quick reply, “Oh, my posture is terrible,” or, “I know I have the worst posture.” Even patients with so-called bad posture can point out others with similar postural abnormalities.

To my inspiring and dedicated patients, you will not hear me talking about bad posture. As of an hour before writing this, I stopped. My new, curtailed approach is to only emphasize an increase in movement.

Here’s the big secret… sitting in uninterrupted impeccable posture for an eight-hour workday WILL inevitably result in muscle strains. Saving the physiology lesson for a future blog post, I’ll just say that your body needs to move. Let’s get hypothetical here: if you have the above mentioned impeccable posture and you are facing forward for your entire work duty, your joints may remain healthy with changing positions only once per hour. Equally important, if you are compactly hunched over a smartphone, laptop, or non-tech object, you may have to move from that stooped posture every quarter-hour to prevent strains.

Time for some good news! You can probably do ANYTHING other than sitting in that stooped posture and reap the benefits of injury prevention. Clearly, you can always find your local physical therapist to refute the overuse movements of your occupation with a tailored 60-second exercise routine. In the meantime, stop worrying about your posture, and start attending to your lack of movement.

Although I can divulge the merits of movement all day, I have to end this article because my smartwatch just alerted me: it’s time to stand up and MOVE!

About the author: Dr. Baio is a licensed physical therapist and certified strength and conditioning specialist originally from Ronkonkoma and now working in Holtsville. He is currently a partner at Martino Physical Therapy where he provides physical therapy for the local community. The clinic utilizes the most current techniques in treatment of sports injuries, post-surgical rehab, work incidents, motor vehicle accidents, concussion rehab, and TMJ dysfunction while giving each patient individual attention. Dr. Baio can be reached via email: info@martinopt.com.