by Dr. Emil Tompkins: A Chiropractor in Tucson with a passion for family health and wellness.
How are muscles contributing to postural imbalance?
Posture affects your spine, your pain and your health. While there are many ways to improve your posture. You must understand how the muscles are contributing to your posture if you’re going to make any noticeable change.
Here are the major muscles that will support good posture.
Sub occipital muscles. These are muscles that are found in the back of the neck and under the occipital bone(rear skull bone). They extend the head and neck. However if they become to strong or too tight, then they will promote forward head posture.
Pectoralis minor: This muscle is found in your chest. When these muscles are too strong or tight, they will cause the shoulders to roll forward.
Rhomboid muscles: these muscles are between the shoulder blades. When they are too weak, they won’t rotate the shoulders backwards causing the slumped over position.
Psoas muscle: This large muscle connects the lower back to the front of the pelvis. When it’s shortened, it 
causes increased lordosis or arch in the back, leading to lower back pain and poor posture.
IT Band: This muscle-tendon combination is found on the outside of the leg and travels from the hip to the knee. This muscle when either weak, or too tight will causes pain and discomfort primarily when you are doing more walking or running than usual.
We want to test these muscles to understand how well they are working and we’ll want to support those muscles when they aren’t working well.
Tune into our next post to see how you can support these muscles with stretching and strengthening.
