#youll be doing this for years and drs will be like but you're so healthy all your tests come back good

[fatal-blow]

okay it's happening. im making a post about compensation and muscle pain.

let's say you have a pain. the type of pain that's been nagging at you for quite a while, maybe in different spots but it has a bit of a pattern: like your left shoulder, or the achy knee, and, of course, back pain.

most people don't really know when or where it started, but in this hypothetical scenario it's been building over the years. that pain, and how it has developed over time, is your body Compensating, which starts as something small, but can grow into something utterly disabling.

to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, imagine you've hurt your foot. it hurts to put weight on the ball, but you still need to do stuff, so you just walk around on your heel.

this isn't the normal way to walk, obviously, and most people would go back to normal once the injury is better. but let's say for whatever reason, you end up in the habit of walking on your heel for a while.

because this isn't the right way to walk, you're putting strain on the shin muscles, which have to constantly flex to hold your toes up. it will also overstretch the bottom of your foot. over time, that overstretched muscle starts to hurt too, so now you start curling your toes in to make it hurt less. this in turn puts more strain on the shin muscles, who have now recruited the muscles on the side of your calf to keep your toes raised.

you are now straining several different muscles, and that's just on the foot. each new pain that arises causes a different muscle to act, which creates another new pain when it in turn starts to strain. and the worst part is that this pattern can be so subtle, you don't even realize it happening.

so when you are modifying your posture to address pain, you have to be careful not to continue the cycle. remind yourself that a good posture is relaxed--even standing requires very little muscle activation. if you catch yourself clenching up, try to find the reason for it and follow it back. it's the only way you'll escape the cycle.

a good posture is a relaxed posture. instead of forcing yourself to sit straight, find the reason you were in that pose to begin with.