Do posture correction sticks really work?

It is useful for correcting postural awareness and temporarily relieving muscle soreness caused by poor posture, but it is basically impossible to rely on it to solve problems such as high and low shoulders, round heads, and even scoliosis once and for all.

In the past two years when I was working on content creation, I sat for more than ten hours every day. My shoulders and neck were so stiff that I could make a clicking sound when I turned my head. I followed the trend and bought a correction stick. When I stood against the wall after get off work every day, I put the stick on my back.

However, my best friend thinks this is a proper IQ tax. She bought one for her younger brother who was in the second grade of junior high school last year. She wanted to cure his shoulders that were crooked due to homework. She forced the child to stand for 20 minutes every day. After three months of standing, there was no change at all. After taking him to the hospital for a film, he found out that the child’s The high and low shoulders are a bilateral muscle imbalance caused by carrying a shoulder bag all year round. Just relying on the standing stick to passively flatten the shoulders, the deep weak muscles are not exercised at all, but they will return to their original shape after standing. Later, I practiced unilateral muscle strength training with a rehabilitation practitioner for half a year before slowly adjusting them.

When I went to the hospital with my best friend, I specifically asked the doctor in the rehabilitation department. He said that people’s expectations for the corrective stick are really two extremes now. They can either make you a god or step into garbage. In fact, it is essentially a portable posture reference. It is the same as when the teacher in school asked you to stand in a military posture with your back against the door panel. It is just more convenient than the door panel and you can pick it up and use it at home at any time. If it is just a simple postural problem, such as holding the chest and protruding the neck due to sitting for a long time, or children always bowing their heads when doing homework, it is perfectly fine to use it to find the muscle memory of the correct posture. However, if there have been structural changes, such as idiopathic scoliosis above 20 degrees, compensatory shoulder height and lowness caused by long and short legs, or even lumbar disc herniation, using it blindly will forcibly reverse the normal physiological curvature of the spine, which will actually aggravate the discomfort.

To put it bluntly, this thing is like a pen holder used when you first learn to write. It can help you fix the correct posture when you first use it. However, if you still hold the pen casually when writing, no matter how much you use the pen holder, you will not be able to correct the bad habits. If you buy it, stand for about ten minutes every day to find the feeling of sinking your shoulders, tightening your core, and stretching your spine. You should consciously maintain this state when sitting in the office, squeezing on the subway, or even eating. In the long run, your posture will definitely improve. If you buy it home, expect that standing for ten minutes every day will be useful. The rest of the time will be paralyzed on the sofa when scrolling on the phone, and lying on the table when typing on the keyboard. Then it really has no other use except gathering dust.

Oh, by the way, when standing, don’t hold your stomach out and hold your breath in order to get three points to stick on the stick. Keep your core gently in place, and bend your knees a little, but don’t lock them. Standing for 15 minutes at a time is like standing up to the sky. If you stand for a long time, your calves will be sore and your lumbar spine will be stressed, which is not worth the gain.