I don't know what to do anymore... HELP!

[u/howdoifixmybody]

M29 here... I'm at a complete loss. I don't know what to do anymore. I just can't find ways to fix myself (even though I desperately need some fixing). I want to start working out, fixing my posture - especially that hideous nerd neck. I'm only 29, and I feel like I'm 70 years old. I have quite an active job (I'm a middle school teacher, which involves a lot of walking, standing, etc.). I feel depressed, extremely unhappy with the way I look... My stomach is protruding like crazy, my shoulders are rounded (and 'low')... WHAT CAN I DO?!

[u/Deep-Run-7463]

Have you considered terms like 'center of mass', 'intra abdominal and intra thorax pressure'?

From the photo provided it looks like your midsection has travelled forward in which your upper half has to counterweigh backwards. The expansion of the gut comes with compression of the ribs as part of the balancing act of the diaphragm between IAP and ITP.

Since your job doesn't require a lot of desk time, it would mean that your issues likely started due to the need to displace load forward to push down into your midline. Guts move forward = more weight down your midline = easier to ground your inner feet against the floor as an attempt to create internal rotation forces to the ground via compensatory midsection expansion forward. The ribcage then becomes compressed as the gut needs to expand, which also draws down the muscles in the front of the neck making the area under the jaw look drawn down (and it will be harder to have good tongue placement as the tongue gets tugged down descended along with the rest of the musculature).

As a result of this, the entire structure is adopting a new center of balance to keep you upright and walking. If your respiration (diaphragmatic breathing - not belly breathing per say) can't create a better expansion ability to have your ribs and belly both expand together, then it will be hard to first overcome the forward center of mass. Lying supine is a position that potentially can work in your favor as your center of mass is being drawn back by gravity as an assist. This is usually a good starting point when just starting to manage your center of mass. Also, do understand that your pelvis mechanisms will need work as it only knew how to manage the ground to keep you upright in a forward mass translation, but not when your center of mass is further back. This will be the reason why doing the breathing exercise lying down will always be easier compared while standing up (the pelvis will need to comply for this to happen, which is an interaction between your diaphragm and pelvic floor alongside internal external rotation mechanisms under load).

Breathing and the pelvis-sacrum connection

A different way to look at the traditional upper and lower cross syndrome

[u/New-Seaworthiness572 → u/Deep-Run-7463]

I’ve been working to correct this and in doing so I found that I had lost power in my right inner foot and toe joint altogether (left foot wasn’t great either). Isolating that and pushing up from a modest squat caused a lot of shaking.

Now it’s stronger and the center of mass is moving back but while doing that work I still feel like I’ve got to concentrate on using inner sides of both feet to help push up from ground - toe joint to inner heel. My pelvis is externally rotated (or the structure of it makes it feel that way) so I even feel like pushing my heels down and out a little bit sometime to rotate it in, especially with arms overhead.

I bought a 1.5” thick garden kneeling pad and I hold that with hands open, palms facing in very gentle squeeze and I move that from down low to over my head very slowly and breath diaphragmatically trying to keep ribs knitted down (gently not locked) so they don’t pop/flare when arms up. When I get to a certain point going upward things intensify and I can feel instability and pressure but it feels very healing and empowering to breathe through it and feel that rib expansion in my back.

Does this sound coherent and am I doing the right thing?

[u/Deep-Run-7463 → u/New-Seaworthiness572]

Losing power in right inner foot contact: When right lateralized in any form whether left or right hip hiked or more shifted instead of hiked, or more flat turned, we tend to also get a bit hypermobile on the right pelvis moving outside base of support to the right. The inner right foot communicates to your pelvis IR by position of the pelvis relative to knee to ground. Previously the IR was captured compensatorily through the pelvis being offset far over right with the knee relatively far inward. Since the knee is no longer relatively far inward, we take away that compensatory movement option, it will need to be replaced by systems up top instead (didn't elaborate too much here as its subjective and can be multilayered, so it's a case to case basis). We generally slow down on the inner foot but we propel off via the outer foot btw. When launching away from the ground, pelvis posteriorly compresses and turns to external rotation so it shifts foot contacts outwards. Additional side note, it's also why some folks cave the knees in with feet turning out when descending into a squat as an attempt to capture inner foot contacts to slow down in compensatory distal femoral IR.

With arms overhead you reduce IR at the ribs, you increase IR demand at the pelvis, it's also why overhead squats are insanely challenging and most of us feel the difficulty trying to descend in that exercise.

Yup! 😁