HeartButt Week 2 - Posture and Your Heart Butt
Posture and Your Heart ButtIt’s way more important than you think!
Good posture is deeply entwined with the health of your fascia. I’ve talked about posture in great detail already here, but I’d like to speak more about it as it relates to our Heart Butt Challenge! Let's narrow the scope, and break down exactly how posture and growing glute muscles go hand in hand. It’s actually incredibly difficult to contract and develop your glute muscles if you don’t correct your posture.
For our everyday mechanics like walking and standing (and as it relates to our Heart Butt work,) your posture focus is straight feet with a neutral pelvis.
I like to start with the feet, lining them up in parallel like railroad tracks. Does one of your feet tend to turn out? This is a signal that you’ll have some work to do on the alignment in your hips. As we learned in the main Heart Butt blog, to work the gluteus maximus we absolutely must have our feet parallel, not turned in or out. Get used to how this feels, and this week constantly check for straight feet. When I go from sitting to standing, I always check my feet before I take my first step!
As for the pelvis, it is vital to learn where the neutral position is in order to use your actual glute muscles when you do the Heart Butt exercises! A TILTED PELVIS SHUTS OFF YOUR GLUTES! When you stand against a wall to check your posture - you should only have a two-finger space between your lower back and the wall. If you have more of a “sway” or curvature than that, you need to engage your inner core in order to pull your pelvis under you until you are at a two-finger distance. If you have less than a two-finger space between the wall and your back, you need to relax your public bone towards the floor and allow your back to arch ever so slightly. No matter if you have too much curve or too little, your lower transverse abs and lower rectus abdominis should be ‘on’ in order to stand in proper posture. If you’re finding that difficult, learn how to train your inner core in this video!
II you’re struggling to find a neutral pelvis, try imagining your pelvis as a bowl that is filled with water. When you tilt forward, the water will spill out the front and you may feel more weight and tension go into your back. When you tilt backward, the water will spill out the back and you may feel the weight shift into your legs. Try tilting in both directions until you settle in between those two positions to line up in neutral. You should feel your abs come on, and the front and back sides of your body working together in harmony (your body will begin to thank you).
Here’s where this posture work leads to BOOTY MAGIC... If you get your posture right on the wall, your pelvis under you, and your core engaged; then as soon as you take a step while maintaining that position your glute will naturally contract. It’s as simple as that - just taking a step!
If you’re one of the booty shapes that lacks volume, your mantra is going to be OPEN THE TISSUE, CONDITION THE TISSUE. This simple adjustment to your posture turns your daily walking into glute conditioning ALL DAY LONG! I did a full explanation of butt shapes and how to tailor your FasciaBlaster sessions and exercises for the different shapes here.
Remember, your posture and your biomechanics impact each other, and they both impact your ability to shape your Heart Butt!
Watch the full week 2 live feed here.