Posture, alignment, and angles: Striking the right pose
Posture and alignment are essential to good form. Maintaining good posture and aligning your body properly when exercising will net you greater gains and fewer injuries.
Good posture improves balance, prevents pain, makes breathing easier, and reduces risk of injury. If you’re bending at the waist as you do standing exercises, it can throw off your balance or strain your lower back. Hunching over while doing seated exercises can restrict your breathing and limit arm and shoulder range of motion. Good posture also sets you up for proper alignment.
Proper alignment reduces stress on joints, muscles, and ligaments. If your hips aren’t stacked when doing a clam exercise, it can place stress on your lower back. Letting your knee go out past your toes when doing lunges, squats, and pliés increases pressure on your knees. Aligning your body properly can also improve your posture.
The information below will help you practice good posture and proper alignment. In addition, carefully follow the exercise instructions and “Tips and techniques” section of each exercise.
Posture checks
Quick posture checks before and during exercise can help you avoid injury and squeeze the most benefit from your workout. If possible (mainly when doing standing exercises), look in a mirror from time to time. Try to take a few moments each day to practice better posture, too. When exercise instructions in our workouts ask you to stand up straight, that means the following:
- chin parallel to the floor
- shoulders back and down
- arms at your sides, elbows relaxed
- abdominal muscles pulled in
- knees even and pointing straight ahead
- feet pointing straight ahead
- body weight evenly distributed on both feet.
Stay neutral
Whether you’re standing or seated, neutral posture requires you to keep your chin parallel to the floor; your shoulders, hips, and knees at even heights; and your knees and feet pointing straight ahead.
Neutral alignment means keeping your body in a straight line from head to toe except for the slight natural curves of the spine.
A neutral spine takes into account the slight natural curves of the spine—it’s not flexed or arched to overemphasize the curve of the lower back. One way to find neutral is to tip your pelvis forward as far as is comfortable (lifting your tailbone up), then tip it backward (tucking your tailbone under) as far as is comfortable. The spot approximately in the middle is neutral. If you’re not used to standing or sitting up straight, it may take a while for this to feel natural.
A neutral wrist is firm and straight, not bent.
Get the angle
Pay attention to the angles noted in some exercise instructions. Try visualizing a 90° angle as an L or two adjacent sides of a square, or picture the distance between the minute hand and hour hand of a clock at 3 o’clock. To visualize a 45° angle, mentally slice the 90° angle in half.
