What Comes First? Pain Or Posture?
Is posture the source of your pain? Or is your posture the result of pain?
This is a chicken or egg scenario.
Did you get injured because of your posture?
Or is your posture because of an injury?
This concept comes from @greglehman. He originally mentioned the thought process from leg injuries.
Basic idea is that people start to limp due to a lower limb injury. They don’t get a lower leg injury from limping.
So why do you have the posture that you have?
Maybe it’s because you’ve adapted to a specific way of moving.
Or maybe it’s because of a response to an event, and your body has now adopted a new position (or posture) in response to it.
Do You Need To Fix Your Posture?
Is your posture wrong?
This is a question I hear a fair amount. It’s often brought up as a source and cause for pain.
What is good posture for you?
Why do you believe your current posture to be the problem? How have you isolated that to be the main cause?
In 1952, a standard reference for posture was created for what would be considered a normal posture. 2000 people were evaluated for their posture.
The “normal” posture was created using an ideal from the 2000 people, not from the average postures observed. Meaning of the 2000 people, none of them demonstrated what was considered to be a “normal” posture. They were all abnormal by their own definition of normal.
That was 1952.
There are now multiple sources of research showing that postures often viewed as bad (like forward neck posture) are not independent causes of pain. @aaron_kubal has multiple posts on the topic.
So does your posture need to be fixed? (being “fixed” is an issue on it’s own).
Or could you just benefit from more variety and movement?
Overuse is a thing. It can happen in many areas of your body. Maybe you could use some more variety in your positions to let things calm down.