Okay, hear me out… I had bad posture all my life. Lots of reasons. I had a really heavy school bag and blame the whole educational system for this shit. Also, my parents never really cared, and most attempts by my mom to make me “stand up straight” were done in a rebuking fashion and I was never responsive.
Fast forward, I’m a grown-up, now with apparent Anterior Pelvic Tilt. For those who don’t know what that means, it’s when your posture becomes this:
I started off by doing APT exercises to help reduce my pelvic tilt, and that was fine… but as soon as I attempted to “stand properly”, I hit that wall of “this doesn’t feel right”. I could only do it consciously, and often “caught myself” slouching or sticking my butt out, only to try to correct the posture again and again and again.
Anyway, in the end, it worked. I was able to see the results of my APT fading after a few months of doing exercises specifically for that, but things really started to light up a year or two later. I kept correcting my posture whenever I remember, while walking to sitting, and ESPECIALLY when seeing older people with hunched back because I’m paranoid this will be me in the future. I even have one friend in his 60’s with an extremely arched back, almost like he stepped out of a fairy tale or movie, and I always wonder whether or not it hurts.
I have a much more neutral stance. My back pain due to bad posture disappeared completely, I only feel it occasionally. My workouts at the gym are better because I can see the posture in the mirror and it’s correct and I’ve been successfully avoiding injury. I also got myself a standing desk and tried to stand for at least half the working day.
It took a lot of repetition and grit to get it done, but now my posture is a hundred times better. It’s not “perfect”, but at least it feels “natural” to sit or stand properly, the pain is gone… the pain was there because my body had not done that shit for over 25 years. And now it’s the other way around: whenever I sway my back or neck forward or stick my butt out, I feel the strain on my muscles and bones.
I’m a school bus driver and every so often I have to help a kid with their bag. Holy shit those things are heavy - seems like they weigh a lot more than the kid does. Why the fuck do kids have to carry so much heavy shit? When I was in grade school I didn’t even have a bag at all.
Why the fuck do kids have to carry so much heavy shit?
Because some dumb ass adults decided we need to shove all this knowledge into their skulls whether they like it or not and we will make them carry it around needlessly using this shitty thing called “homework”. School should end with the bell. Kids need free time too.
Only seems to gets worse when they get older, too. The books just scale with them. Maybe not so bad if you’re going back and forth to your locker (is it lighter in countries without lockers?), but I used to have to hoof it to the library in college so I could bum the wifi.
It sucked. If I had to gauge it, that was 25-30lbs of textbook for about 3.5 miles of scorching heat. I also have a very known vice of looking absolutely anywhere except straight ahead of me when I’m out and about.
While I was half-turned, admiring this swallowtail butterfly a family had painted on their mailbox, my foot caught a crack in the sidewalk. Went down, my backpack fell on top of me.
At least in my experience, sometimes, the kid may not actually have to carry that much stuff at all, and the reason they carry around such a heavy bag may be due to their own poor organization skills.
Okay, hear me out… I had bad posture all my life. Lots of reasons. I had a really heavy school bag and blame the whole educational system for this shit. Also, my parents never really cared, and most attempts by my mom to make me “stand up straight” were done in a rebuking fashion and I was never responsive.
Fast forward, I’m a grown-up, now with apparent Anterior Pelvic Tilt. For those who don’t know what that means, it’s when your posture becomes this:
I started off by doing APT exercises to help reduce my pelvic tilt, and that was fine… but as soon as I attempted to “stand properly”, I hit that wall of “this doesn’t feel right”. I could only do it consciously, and often “caught myself” slouching or sticking my butt out, only to try to correct the posture again and again and again.
Anyway, in the end, it worked. I was able to see the results of my APT fading after a few months of doing exercises specifically for that, but things really started to light up a year or two later. I kept correcting my posture whenever I remember, while walking to sitting, and ESPECIALLY when seeing older people with hunched back because I’m paranoid this will be me in the future. I even have one friend in his 60’s with an extremely arched back, almost like he stepped out of a fairy tale or movie, and I always wonder whether or not it hurts.
I have a much more neutral stance. My back pain due to bad posture disappeared completely, I only feel it occasionally. My workouts at the gym are better because I can see the posture in the mirror and it’s correct and I’ve been successfully avoiding injury. I also got myself a standing desk and tried to stand for at least half the working day.
It took a lot of repetition and grit to get it done, but now my posture is a hundred times better. It’s not “perfect”, but at least it feels “natural” to sit or stand properly, the pain is gone… the pain was there because my body had not done that shit for over 25 years. And now it’s the other way around: whenever I sway my back or neck forward or stick my butt out, I feel the strain on my muscles and bones.
I’m a school bus driver and every so often I have to help a kid with their bag. Holy shit those things are heavy - seems like they weigh a lot more than the kid does. Why the fuck do kids have to carry so much heavy shit? When I was in grade school I didn’t even have a bag at all.
Because some dumb ass adults decided we need to shove all this knowledge into their skulls whether they like it or not and we will make them carry it around needlessly using this shitty thing called “homework”. School should end with the bell. Kids need free time too.
Only seems to gets worse when they get older, too. The books just scale with them. Maybe not so bad if you’re going back and forth to your locker (is it lighter in countries without lockers?), but I used to have to hoof it to the library in college so I could bum the wifi.
It sucked. If I had to gauge it, that was 25-30lbs of textbook for about 3.5 miles of scorching heat. I also have a very known vice of looking absolutely anywhere except straight ahead of me when I’m out and about.
While I was half-turned, admiring this swallowtail butterfly a family had painted on their mailbox, my foot caught a crack in the sidewalk. Went down, my backpack fell on top of me.
I fractured a rib.
At least in my experience, sometimes, the kid may not actually have to carry that much stuff at all, and the reason they carry around such a heavy bag may be due to their own poor organization skills.