How Do You Stand? A Posture Analysis.

As we wrap up this week's events, I just came back from a 2 mile beach hike along the coast of Anacortes, WA overlooking the San Juan Islands and it was a great way to shed off the extra "stuffing" from the thanksgiving holiday.  

I am reposting a feature article written by one of my personal idols: a man whose lectures I always listen to when I get a chance. I had an opportunity to listen to one of his seminars in the Seattle area on the HUMAN BRAIN and that was fascinating. If you don't know who he is, here is a quick BIO of him. He just came out with a NEW book called the Power Program! I have been following his career and this will be the first of many articles from him on my page.

Michael Colgan is a biochemist and physiologist nutritionist who gained recognition through his articles in the bodybuilding magazine Muscular Development and also through his books. From 1971 through 1982 Colgan was a senior member of the Science Faculty at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.^[1] In 1972 he started the Colgan Institute in Auckland, New Zealand. Dedicated to Nutrition Science the Colgan Institute has since moved to San Diego, California and Saltspring Island, British Columbia, Canada. According to the Institute's website the Colgan Institute is "...a consulting, educational and research facility concerned with the effects of nutrition on physical performance and on inhibiting the degeneration of aging." Colgan's books cover several areas including nutrition for strength and muscular development, nutrional strategies and methods to slow the aging process, and nutritional methods to prevent disease. He recently became one of the Scientific Advisory Board Members of Isagenix International.

How Do You Stand?
Dr Michael Colgan 20 November 2012

So many folk have asked about the Colgan Institute Power Program that I will do some basic articles to try and answer the most common questions. First principle: Effective exercise depends on correct posture.  Most of us spend a good part of our youth sedentary and overfed, hunched at desks learning to read and write. As adults, most spend another 40 years earning a living in the same contorted posture. Our habitual seated slump resembles a consumptive chimpanzee. It shortens hip flexors and hamstrings, compresses the lumbar spine, and weakens supporting back muscles. It promotes a protruding belly that fails to support the internal organs. It pulls the shoulders and head forward, and rounds the upper back. This structure makes powerful movement impossible.

 

Imposing any usual weight training program on such a defective body only worsens the defects. So it is hardly surprising that most adults find it uncomfortable to do even moderate exercise. Discomfort is one big reason why the majority of people who buy gym memberships hardly ever use them.  Yet most gyms ignore structure. They focus on forcing everyone into one-size-fits-all, as-little-supervised-as-possible programs, involving seated, fixed-arc uni-planar weight machines, ellipticals, stationary bicycles, and treadmills. If you use these innefectual devices - stop now. They will not release your latent power, nor yield the health and fitness you seek. 

Achieving Correct Posture

Working with Olympic and world champion athletes over the last 38 years, we have analyzed how correct posture and movement release great power. We realized decades ago that any effective exercise program has to start with two basic criteria. First, correct the structural defects imposed by human domestication. Second, impose only those exercises that follow the anatomical design of the human body.
The basic principles are balance, lengthen, stretch and strengthen.
1. Balance the structure about its center of gravity
2. Lengthen the structure
3. Stretch short muscles and fascia
4. Strengthen weak muscles and connective tissues
Posture that optimizes movement occurs only when the body is long and balanced about its center of gravity. In this position it requires the minimum muscular activity to hold itself upright against gravity, and therefore the least expenditure of energy. It is also the neutral position from which movement can occur fastest and most easily in any direction, without postural adjustment. It is the optimum posture for power.
 

Since 1974, the Colgan Institute has analyzed the posture of thousands of athletes and sedentary folk, and related the findings to human anatomy. Together with the work of other researchers, we have pinpointed six landmarks of balanced posture:
Here is the example of side posture. Hang a plumb line in front of a squared grid on a wall. In minimal clothing, the subject stands side on, relaxed with the plumb line falling through the center of the pelvis just behind the axis of the hip joint. We photograph this side posture and subject it to computer analysis. In ideal side posture the plumb line falls as follows:
 

Ear: The plumb line passes just behind the auricle (earhole) of the ear. The most common postural defect that requires correction is a forward head, showing a plum line more than 1.0 cm behind the meatus.
Shoulder: The plumb line falls through the center of the shoulder. The most common postural defect that requires correction is forward shoulders, showing a plumb line 1.0 cm or more towards the rear of the shoulder.
Lumbar vertebrae L3-L5: The plumb line falls through the midline of the vertebrae. It helps analysis if you locate the rear of the vertebrae manually. The most common defect is an anterior tilt to the pelvis, which pulls the lumbar spine into excessive lordosis so that the plumb line falls 1.0 cm or more towards the back of L3-L5.
Hip: The plumb line falls immediately behind the axis of the hip joint. To locate this landmark, the subject flexes the hip and places a finger on the axis of the joint. The most common defect is anterior tilt of the hip, which causes the plumb line to fall 2.0 cm or more behind the axis point.
Knee: The plumb line falls just in front of the axis of flexion of the knee.
Foot: The plumb line falls in front of the outer malleolus of the ankle, approximately through the center of the arch of the foot.

Hip/Knee Stability: Here is one of the common problems, and a common error in postural analysis. Numerous old texts, and even some recent books, show the plumb line passing through the center of the hip and knee. They are incorrect. The correct anatomical positioning of hip and knee about the center of gravity follows a locking principle well known in engineering. The axis of flexion of the hip joint is designed to be in front of the plumb line. The axis of flexion of the knee joint is designed to be behind the plumb line. This superb design stabilizes both joints in extension, with virtually no muscular effort required to stand upright. That’s the way you want to stand.
 

Loss of hip/knee stability is common in the partly bent knee, forward head, shambling gait of many folk who have followed incorrect training. This posture makes standing, walking and running all exhausting, because the hip and knee muscles are constantly overworked in order to prevent flexion and hold the body upright against gravity. The first job in these cases is to erect the spine and straighten the legs and hips. The whole exercise program should be devoted to this task, because without the correction, exercise will only compromise the body further. For information on corrective exercises see The New Power Program.(1) 

Pelvis: Here is another common problem. In ideal posture, the pelvis is level front to back. The anterior superior iliac spines (ASIS) and posterior superior iliac spines (PSIS) are level. In this position, the hip stabilizers have equal pull, thereby supporting upright stance with the least expenditure of energy. 

                                                  

At the front of the body for example, the rectus femoris of the quadriceps, the tensor fascia lata and the sartorius all pull down from their attachments on the anterior iliac spines, whereas the obliques and rectus abdominis pull up from their attachments on or near the pubic bones. More than 60% of people over age 40 that we test have lost the support of their obliques and rectus abdominis. It happens to women mostly from childbirth, and can be corrected only by the right rehabilitative exercise. It happens to men mostly from seated, sedentary life. The result is anterior tilting of the pelvis and increased lumbar curve, causing low back pain that makes exercising very unpleasant. Common rehabilitative regimens of sit-ups, lying leg raises, side leg lifts, Roman chairs, and various infernal machines only worsen the condition. It is easily correctable. See The New Power Program.(1)
1. Colgan M. The New Power Program (Vancouver: Apple Publishing) available from colganinstitute.com and bookstores. 

To know more information about Dr. Colgan's work or if you like what you see published on my blog or other suggestions, please email me at skagitwellness@gmail.com and I would love to hear your thoughts. -MJ