What does it mean to be flexed? Straighten out your arm in front of you, now flex those guns of yours. See how your bicep shortened? Yep, that’s flexion. If you were to hold your arm in that position passively (that means knock it off with the gun show) for 8-10 hours a day since you were, let’s say 7 years-old, what do you think would happen? Let me tell you.
Your body would notice that you really liked being in that position, so it would do you a big favor. It would make that position as efficient as it could. Your body would shorten your bicep to hold that position, and you’d walk around like a T-Rex, barely able to tie your own tie. Now, I want you to imagine the act of sitting. Not to hard right? I mean you’ve been doing it for 8-10 hrs a day since you were 7. Hey, me too. It’s hard to do long division standing up.
When we are sitting, the front of the body is in constant flexion. Yes, even if you are sitting with exhaustingly good posture, your body is in flexion. So, what is exactly is being flexed? And, more importantly, what are the consequences. Here’s a short list: back pain, neck pain headaches.
Let’s make a list of the major muscles that adaptively shorten (remember the bicep analogy) from sitting. For you people in the know, this could be a big list. I’m going to simplify it for everybody else.
Here’s a chart to help explain a few things:
Flexion from the ground up
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Stay tuned, next time I’ll give you some solutions, as soon as I get this crick out of my neck. Before I start getting those symptoms myself, let’s try to figure out some smart solutions. But let’s recap to make sure we are all on the same page. If you are constantly in flexion, your body will adaptively shorten. This adaptive shortening causes pain. So what’s the solution? Extend! Extension is the opposite of flexion.
If you’re interested in me help you get out of pain, shoot me an email or give me a call. I’m located in Charlotte, NC. Details are on the contact us page.