How to help clients correct their posture

A good posture is vital to overall wellness, so as a fitness instructor, it’s important to address body alignment issues. Checking posture while your clients are performing an exercise is second nature for most personal trainers, but there is a lot of value in creating awareness about their body alignment when they’re not in session too. It’s common for people to develop bad habits with their posture that stem from standing, sitting or even walking, so addressing these issues holistically can enable clients to take their health to a new level. Bad posture habits can lead to sore, tight and overstretched muscles, which can trigger pain and stop clients in their tracks. It can also lead to a loss of range of motion and muscle strength, making everyday activities like opening doors and going for walks painful. Here are some of the best ways to help clients correct their posture:

Begin by correcting posture in session
It’s likely you do this already, but if you don’t, it’s one of the very first steps to creating awareness surrounding posture. It’s vital that you correct client form while they train for a number of reasons. Performing a technique correctly is important because it minimises muscle strength and injury, and ensures muscles are working in their most ideal form. Good posture while exercising also helps burn more fat, and ensures joints are in an ideal position to deal with force and pressure. Focusing on body alignment while exercising is the gateway to understanding the importance of posture in our everyday lives.

Suggest ways to focus on posture in regularly performed tasks  
Bad habits with posture often develop from a multitude of different regularly performed tasks or activities. When we repetitively use our bodies without paying attention to the strain it’s resting in, walking, sitting, riding a bike and driving can begin to wreak havoc on our bodies. If you suspect your client has developed bad posture habits with their day-to-day activities, address it and help them fix it. Suggest ways they can make adjustments and help them understand the toll it has on their body. If they can see the difference between performing activities with their posture in mind, they’re more likely to make paying attention a habit, benefiting their overall body alignment.

Embed corrective measures into their sessions 
For clients who have well-developed posture issues, it may be helpful to incorporate corrective measures into their fitness routines. A client’s posture can benefit by focusing on adjusting and adapting certain exercises and movements in order to strengthen and stretch necessary parts of their body. Assisting clients with their posture is a great way to improve overall practice, fast-forward client health goals and maintain a happy and long-term client relationship.