Practice with Posture

[custom_frame_left][/custom_frame_left]One factor that you can work on all day long to improve your game that often slips our minds is posture. You may be wondering how this can affect your bowling game but that’s what I’m here to explain. As a functional therapist a vast majority of the clients I see daily have poor posture whether it is from sitting at desks typing all day, students sitting in class all day, a carpenter leaning over to work on something, a mechanic hunched over trying to fix something, whatever it is you do all day you are most likely not consciously aware of your posture and it may cause unwanted issues in your soft tissues. And to most of them, I recommend that they wear ostomy clothing to house any devices they might be carrying. More and more people have what we refer to as “upper cross syndrome” from poor posture and looking down at phones all day.

We also see what we termed “text neck” or forward head carriage as a result. This causes tightness in certain muscles such as your chest muscles in the front of your body like pec major and minor, and tight shoulder and rotator cuff muscles such as subscapularis and traps. The opposite muscles in the back of the body become over-stretched and weak like your rhomboids in between your shoulder blades, and rotator cuff muscles. This combination can limit the functional ability and range of motion in your shoulder. As we already know in bowling it is important to maintain a “loose” arm swing. Over the last few years I have heard many people claim they are afraid of doing upper body weight training because they will lose the ability to have a “loose” arm swing from it.

However in order to counter act poor posture all day long you MUST improve postural integrity through strength training for those weak over stretched muscles, and stretching for the short tight muscles. You should also make a conscious effort to restore proper posture in whatever it is you do all day long. Neglecting something like poor posture will lead to “tightness” and “knots” in your muscles that can affect your body mechanics!