Having a good posture is key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Your posture plays a huge role in making sure that your bones are well aligned with the rest of your body while the tension in your ligaments and muscles is properly distributed. A person with good posture will have improved blood flow, decreased wear and tear on joints, and experience less shoulder, back, and neck pain than a person with bad posture.

Your posture is determined by your day-to-day habits which are formed over years of repeated behavior. Luckily, you won’t need years to improve your posture. In this article, we will explore 4 things you can do daily that will improve your posture in less than 30 days.

Start Your Day with Stretches

Tight and tense muscles have a major impact on your posture and can lead to a miserable day in the office. A daily stretch can help relieve any tension or pain you may have sustained from sleeping, energize you for the day, improve your posture, decrease back pain, help prevent injury, decrease muscle pain, and improve your body’s flexibility. 

Form a new daily habit of a full-body stretch in the morning; this will allow you to loosen up your muscles and give you a better chance at maintaining a good posture during the day.

Keep Your Sitting Posture in Check

You may have heard of ergonomic chairs, and even ergonomic mouse pads and keyboards, but what does the term ergonomic mean and why is it important? According to Collins, ergonomics is the science that seeks to adapt work or working conditions to suit the worker so that workers can perform activities efficiently and comfortably. An ergonomic chair would be a chair that can be adjusted to give a person the most support and most comfort while they are seated.

Your chair can only do so much though. When you are sitting at your office desk, or even seated behind the wheel of your car, try and practice ergonomic sitting. Most people tend to lean forward while seated, putting unnecessary pressure on the lower back. While seated, sit upright so that your shoulder blades are in line with your hip and make sure your chair’s height is adjusted so that your feet can sit flat on the ground. Your knees should bend at a natural 90-degree angle and legs should remain uncrossed. 

Start Strengthening Your Core Muscles

The muscles in your core can be defined as those that help keep you upright. Exercising these muscles can greatly improve your posture in just a few sessions. Exercises such as planks, deadlifts, squats, and crunches are some of the main exercises you can do to strengthen your core and help you on the road to a better posture.

Relax with Care

Relaxing after a long day at work is a must; however, now is not the time to start slacking on your posture. Watching TV from a couch or while lounging on a bed may be comfortable, but the effect it could have on your muscles later that night may just negate all those good feelings. Watching TV from the wrong position can cause strain in the back and neck muscles, so be sure to give your body ample support during times of relaxation.

Your bed is another important factor in good posture as the right bed can mean the difference between a good night’s sleep and one which leaves a person with more aches and pains than they went to sleep with. Make sure your mattress is hard enough to support your weight but not too hard that it affects your posture while you sleep. If you feel that your current bed is not up to the task, a list of Black Friday mattress deals can help you find a bed that best suits you and your budget.

While forming new habits can be difficult, improving posture can have a huge impact on a person’s everyday health and wellbeing. Start practicing some of these good habits today and you should see an improvement in your overall health almost immediately.