How does good posture and exercise affect your physical body?

One danger of "jumping into an exercise program" is that you have postural problems that need to be identified and corrected (as much as possible).

Here are 5 points about postural problems:

1. Its very important to do exercises with correct postural alignment. For example, you shouldn't let your head drop down or rise up when you do bentover rows (the head should be in line with the torso, looking down). There are thousands of examples like this one.

2. Stay out of the injury cycle. Uncorrected postural problems will keep you in the injury cycle. If one part of the kinetic chain (human movement system) is out of alignment (and stays that way), you are headed for a pattern of muscle injuries, trunk injuries and even arm and leg injuries.

3. Some common injuries caused by postural problems include: hamstring strains, groin strains, low Back pain, headaches, biceps tendonitis, shoulder injuries, plantar fascitis, shin splints and patellar tendonitis (jumper's knee). There are many others.

4. Its important to strengthen your core and not just focus on sculpting six-pack abs. About 80% of all people experience low back pain and injuries. This is usually due to a weak core. Having strong arms and legs doesn't help you much if your core is weak.

5. As you burn fat and lose weight, continue to work on improving your posture. This will make your workouts more efficient and pain-free.