Posture, Pimblett & Mental Gymnastics

I use posture as an assessment tool.

Just as I use your gait as an assessment tool.

And when I do, people commonly ask me, "is there anything wrong with my posture" or "am I walking wrong"

It makes me smile when they do, it's a perfectly natural question.

But, it's not the reason I look at these things.

I'm not looking for what’s "wrong"

I don't believe we can "fix" a persons posture

What I look for are what is and isn't happening

And I see those things as solutions the body has put in place, solutions to a problem.

What problem?

Now that's the question.

I've currently two people on my roster that came to me with low back and knee issues.

These are two very differently people, they couldn't be more different if we tried.

And on further investigation, we have discovered that the solution is actually to be found in old shoulder injuries.

As soon as we started rehabbing these old shoulder issues, in both cases, the lower body issues got easier.

I'm not fixing posture, I am trying to solve problems that the posture eludes to, and if I get the right answer, the posture very often changes.

Changes in what way?

Well that depends on the body.

This brings me to Paddy "The Baddy" Pimblett of UFC fame.

If you don't follow fight sports, then google him at the recent weight in with Justin Gaethje.

This photo sent the online coaching community wild due to Paddy's posture.

Paddy (on the right) with his "problematic posture"

Coaches and trainer all looking for their moment in the spotlight riding the coat tails of the fight, all got their knickers in a twist over the posture and started predicting Paddy's future, the pain he is going to be in, how they would train him differently to get rid of "muscle imbalances" and cure him of all ills in ways only they know how to do

It's frankly disgraceful to see these types of posts, but they are increasingly more and more common.

They are in essence, fear mongering.

Now, once upon a time, I may have thought similar, but once thing I've always been aware of is certain sports tend towards certain postures and body types.

The Olympic final of the 100 meters tends to have a line up of very similar looking physiques (and then there was Bolt......)

The podium on a marathon tends to have similarly built bodies stood atop it, very different bodies to those who sprinted.

Look at the top player in BJJ and compare their physiques to the top players in Muay Thai, they won't be the same.

And then look at postural or movement anomalies.

For example a mountain biker I helped a few years ago, when we "fixed" his old ankle sprain, he lost the ability to turn left on the bike!

His riding style had been built around this odd ankle motion, we had to "unfix" it.

This is Tiger Woods story, years of back pain, yet when they fixed it, he moved differently and had to relearn his swing.

And this is something the interwebz folks can't seem to accept.

They can't seem to accept that there is nuance.

That there isn't a simple, easy, black and white, one size fits all answer.

And they'll do all sorts of mental gymnastics, come up with all kinds of explanations and stories, give examples that may superficially look good, but once you look a little deeper fall apart pretty quickly.

The truth is bodies are complex, and highly adaptable.

And at the higher levels of performance, there is a price to pay and most are willing to pay it to play at that level.

You can only be at the top for so long, so why not pay the price, you can deal with any fall out later on down the line.

So I guess what I'm saying by all this, is be very selective of who you listen to.

There's an old Latin phrase that used to get used a lot, you don't hear it so much these days. i think we should bring it back.

It goes, "Caveat Emptor" which means essentially "Buyer Beware"

It means, in one or another, "you are responsible for you" it's that you should be aware of what you're buying and don't just let people sell you.

Be cynical and think critically.

Be objective when people are trying to make you emotive.

Online can be a tricky landscape to navigate.

But the more certain a person sounds, the fancier the language they use, the more that preach an "use against them" or "I'm right and they're wrong" attitude, the less you should trust them.

Unless it's me

I'm usually right

Except when I'm not.

And you'll tell me when I'm talking out my arse won't you?

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Regards

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net