Your body gets good at what it needs to get good at

I was doing my CPD (Continuing Professional Development) training this week and came across an interesting quote, “your body gets good at what it needs to get good at”.  The program I was studying was a mobility program and this quote was based on mobility, but I think it can apply to other areas as well.  What does it mean you may ask?  From a mobility perspective, your body will adapt to what it needs to. ​

For example, if you sit all day, your body will become good at sitting. This is great whilst you are sitting, but it is terrible for the non-sitting times (and general function of the body).  Sitting for increased periods of time leads to all sorts of muscle imbalances: 

• You often get tight hips, hamstrings, hip flexors, tight chest, tight upper neck etc, with prolonged sitting. 
• You also get weak gluteal, mid back and anterior neck muscles. 

Going back to the quote, these muscle and posture changes are good for sitting, but what happens when you are standing and walking around?  These tight muscles lead to postural changes, lower back pain, upper back pain, neck pain, headaches etc.  

Why? Because your body is no longer any good at standing and moving.  It is too comfortable in the compromised sitting position.

What do you want to get good at?
You have to decide what you need to be good at and work on getting good at it.  Hopefully you will choose standing and moving well.  There is tons of research coming out showing how bad sitting is all day, not just on mobility, but also general health.

Once you have made the decision, you can then make it happen. How you do this will depend your current state.  Ask yourself questions like this:

• Do you need to work on flexibility/mobility?  
• Do you have annoying back problems that stop you achieving your goal? 
• Do you need to get stronger in certain areas, for example your core? 

Once you have found what you need to work on, you can then do the most important thing, START.  If you want some advice on what may work best for you, or you have an annoying back problem stopping you achieving your goal, contact me and I can see if chiropractic care would be right for you.