Posture AI

Why Is Good Posture Attractive & Top 10 Exercises to Boosts Yours

Nov 28, 2024

woman standin in gym - Is Good Posture Attractive

Good posture can make a lasting impression. Think about the last time you met someone new. Did you notice their smile or friendly voice? Or were you drawn to the way they carried themselves? Posture is a subtle yet powerful part of human attractiveness. So, it’s unsurprising that many wonder, “Is good posture attractive?” Research shows that good posture can make you seem more confident, personable, and intelligent. Fortunately, improving your posture isn’t as daunting as it sounds. This article will highlight the benefits of good posture for health and appearance. You’ll also discover effective posture exercises to help you maintain it for life.

As you read, keep in mind Posture AI’s solution for correcting posture. Our posture correction app gives you the tools to reach your posture goals so you can enjoy the benefits of improved posture, including a more attractive appearance.

What Is Good Posture & Why It Matters for Your Health

backpain due to posture - Is Good Posture Attractive

Good posture is the alignment of your body that minimizes strain on:

Muscles
Joints
Ligaments

Proper posture involves standing or sitting with a neutral spine, where the head is aligned with the shoulders and the spine is naturally curved. Good posture is important for overall health, reducing the risk of:

Back and neck pain
Preventing fatigue
Improving circulation
Promoting better breathing

What is Posture?

Posture is the natural way you hold your body. It’s your body’s position while you’re still and moving. Your musculoskeletal system maintains your posture. Muscles, ligaments, and tendons work with joints throughout your body to control your position at all times. They adjust your body to hold you in a stable, comfortable shape. It’s how you can stay in one place when you’re not moving without sliding out of your chair.

Changes to your posture also make certain movements possible. If your body couldn’t change shape, you’d be stuck in one position like a mannequin. Bending over to pick up a pen you dropped would be much harder if you had to tip your entire body onto the floor to grab it. Everyone has a unique natural posture, but you can follow a few general rules to improve your posture and prevent common issues like back pain.

What are the Types of Posture?

Static Posture

Static posture is how you hold your body when you’re not moving. It’s when you’re standing, sitting, or lying down (including sleeping). If someone’s ever scolded you to sit up straight and not slouch, they were (maybe rudely) asking you to adjust your static posture.

Dynamic posture

Dynamic posture is how you keep your body stable while moving. Even if you’re not actively thinking about it, your body constantly adjusts while:

Running
Stretching to reach something
Walking up and down the stairs

People who focus on their body position while playing a sport or doing yoga concentrate on their dynamic posture.

What is Proper Posture?

There’s no such thing as perfect or imperfect posture. Everyone’s body is slightly different. Don’t stress about having exactly ideal posture all the time. Some studies have found that commonly considered poor or lousy posture has more to do with self-esteem and thinking you look good rather than staying healthy or preventing pain. That means you can be mindful about sitting or moving safely, but try not to worry about it all the time. Even if there’s not one type of posture that’s best for everyone in every situation, you can still follow a few general rules to support your body. The best way to maintain good posture is to protect your spine’s curves. Your spine naturally has three curves:

One in your neck (your cervical spine)
The middle of your back (your thoracic spine)
In your lower back (your lumbar spine)

Tips for Maintaining Good Posture

These three curves shape your spine like a gently curved uppercase S. Your posture shouldn’t be bent or flexed to add extra curves to any spine section. Your body controls a lot of your posture automatically, but you can do a few things to maintain a good, healthy posture:

Keep your head above your shoulders.
Don’t crane your neck back or hang my head heavy in front of me.
Hold your shoulders above your hips

Picture an imaginary line running from your hips to your shoulders. You want that line to be as straight as possible. That line will aim further off-center if I slouch forward or back. Keep a 90-degree angle (the angle in the corners of a square) between your back and hips if you’re sitting down.

Ergonomic Tips for Sitting and Standing

Keep your lower body stable: The best place for your legs and feet depends on whether you’re sitting down or standing up. If you’re sitting, keep your feet flat on the floor before you with your knees bent at 90 degrees and your ankles separated. If your feet can’t reach the floor, use a footrest to avoid dangling unsupported. When you’re standing up, keep your feet hip-distance apart. Position your body so most of your weight is on the balls of your feet.

What Is Good Posture?

“Good posture is also known as neutral spine. When we have good posture, the muscles surrounding the spine are balanced and support the body equally,” explains the University of Michigan’s physical therapist and certified strengthening and conditioning specialist.

Here’s a quick posture check-in:

When sitting, your feet should rest flat on the floor, with even weight on both hips.
Your back should be mostly straight (you’ll have natural curves in the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical areas).
Your shoulders should be back but relaxed, and your ears should line up over the collarbones.

“When standing, your legs should have a slight knee bend so you’re not hyperextending or locking your knee joints,” says Kara Griffith, exercise physiologist at Colorado Canyons Hospital & Medical Center. Good posture allows for those natural curves without slouching into them. You want to keep your spine in proper alignment by ensuring:

Your head is held high
Your shoulders line up over your hips
Your hips are over my knees

How Poor Posture Impacts Your Health

Slouching around with your shoulders hunched, your spine curled, and your head down is not an attractive look. But bad posture is much more than just an aesthetic issue. When your spine is chronically misaligned due to poor posture, it can lead to several surprising health issues.

These can include:

Digestive problems: A slouched posture can result in a sluggish digestive system, making food travel more slowly and process less efficiently. It also puts pressure on the abdomen, which can trigger heartburn and acid reflux.
Incontinence: Slouching increases pressure on the bladder. For someone already dealing with a weak pelvic floor, that added pressure can lead to more frequent urine leakage.
Joint and muscle pain: Not keeping your spine in proper alignment can create imbalances in your body. That imbalance can cause pain in your:
- Lower back
- Hips
- Knees
- Neck and related muscles
Spinal wear and tear: If the bones in my spine are constantly crunched together due to slouching, it can take a toll on my skeleton. Over time, that can make my spine fragile and more susceptible to injury.
Trouble breathing: A rounded back leaves my chest caved in. And when my lungs don’t have the space to expand and fill with oxygen fully, you may feel like you can’t quite get a full breath.

What are the Symptoms of Bad Posture?

A less-than-ideal posture isn’t a health condition or disease, so it doesn’t always cause symptoms. If you’ve been in one position for a long time without moving, it’s common to have:

Back pain
Headaches
Stiffness

You can prevent some of these issues by improving your posture and staying active, but your posture doesn’t always cause them. Lots of people feel guilty about not having perfect posture. Studies have found that posture might not directly cause pain as much as many think. Poor posture is likely only one factor leading to pain and other symptoms. Not stretching or being physically active also causes these issues, probably more than your posture.

Why is Good Posture Attractive & How Can I Improve Mine?

person sitting on chair - Is Good Posture Attractive

If you want to be attractive, improve your posture. Research shows that the more healthy you look, the more attractive you look. Healthy equals good breeder. Slouching, on the other hand? It’s as if your body is saying you barely have the energy to stand straight, let alone breed. Let’s be honest. No one looks at attractive people and says, “Wow, I love their posture.” Instead, good posture is one of the most underappreciated aspects of attractiveness. You can be very attractive (and slender), and slouching will make:

Your shoulders droop
Your stomach hangs out
Pull your chin down towards your chest
Make your behind look flat

Self-Esteem, Dignity, and First Impressions

The psychological effects of slouching can go beyond aesthetics. When you are slouching, you look as if you don’t care about yourself or anything else. This falls under the heading of deportment, one of the most significant aspects of first impressions. It’s usually the case that good posture is natural when you’re feeling great and that all is well in your little world. But sometimes, poor posture is merely a nasty habit.

The Science Behind Posture

In Amy Cuddy’s 2012 TED Talk, the social psychologist went beyond the surface explanation of how a better posture will make you appear to others, explaining how it can change how you feel and think about yourself. Working to improve posture can increase testosterone levels in your blood and, at the same time, decrease cortisol levels, or ‘the stress hormone,’ in your brain. This chemical reaction is similar to how smiling more can have huge, positive influences on your entire life. So, if you lack self–esteem, look at how you’re sitting; it might just be a contributing factor.

Your Confidence and Body Language

If you think about those slouched-over people again, would you say that any of them were confident in themselves and with others? It’s unlikely. That’s because confident people project confidence to the world, and that confidence starts with some quick tactics to improve posture. Bad posture, not to mention lousy body language, could even hold you back at job interviews.

The Science Behind Body Language and Success

Let’s say you were interviewing candidates for a job opening. Two walk in—one is standing tall, with shoulders back and back straight; the other is slouched over a little, with rounded shoulders. Who makes the better, more confident first impression?

It’s the first candidate; the second one may seem as if they’re:

Less confident
Less professional
Even if they’re tired or unhealthy

And this is far from mere anecdotal speculation: this is a scientifically proven fact.

Your Levels of Positivity

Just as being more active can make you feel happier and more energetic, having the correct posture can also improve your mood. It’s safe to say that enhanced confidence, self-esteem, and appearance should certainly impact your positivity. Remaining stationary and having the correct posture can improve your positivity levels by sitting or standing upright correctly. In a series of 2012 studies testing the effects of slouching vs. good posture, Dr. Erik Peper of San Francisco State found that participants who had been instructed to slouch reported feelings of:

Sadness
Loneliness
Isolation
Tiredness

On the contrary, those participants who had sat or stood correctly reported feeling:

Much happier
More positive
More energetic

Improve Posture, Improve Your Social Life & Wellbeing

To borrow and edit the famous maxim: improved posture, just like manners, doesn’t cost a penny – but it could have a massive impact on your social life. Think about the amount of better first impressions I could be making, the more confidence I could be projecting, and how much better I could feel, in both my body and mind, just by standing or sitting up straight!

How to Improve Your Posture

Here are 13 tips for improving and maintaining your posture. I’ve tried almost all of them, and they work great for me.

1. Identify Your Key Motivation for Having a Good Posture

Why do you want a good posture? Is it to improve your breathing?
To boost others’ perception of you? Feel more confident about yourself?
To avoid health problems?

Be clear on your underlying desire so you can remind yourself of it whenever you feel lazy to do anything about my posture.

2. Pretend Your Body is Held by a String

I read this analogy somewhere before, and I find it helpful. It might sound weird, but it’s pretty effective. Pretend that your spine and head are held up by a string from the ceiling all the time. If you are lying down, pretend the string is held in a direction parallel to the ground. Focus on aligning your spine and head with the string while relaxing other body parts. Usually people end up tensing all other body parts when trying to keep the right posture. What this does is it keeps you focused on keeping your back straight and loosening your other muscles.

3. Set a Reminder To Check in on Your Posture

Many of us may have the intention to maintain good posture, but we usually forget about it after about 5 minutes! A reminder in the form of a Post-it note, item in your calendar, alarm, etc., definitely helps. The frequency is up to you, from once a day to as frequently as every 15 minutes. With sufficient reminders, you will soon start kicking into a good posture.

4. Get a Head, Shoulder and Back Massage

If you have always been in a bad posture, you will find that it’s hard to change your posture due to the hardening of your joints. I found that getting a massage loosens up my joints, which makes it easier for me to get into a better posture afterward.

5. Eliminate Bad Habits That Cultivate Bad Postures

This includes:

Watching TV/reading while lying down
Working under dim light (which results in slouching)
Sleeping on your stomach (apparently 7% of people do that!)

6. Get a good-quality chair:

A good chair will have a sufficiently firm, dense cushion with back support. I prefer the back of the chair to run up to my shoulders so I can place them against it.

7. Place Your Butt at the Innermost Edge of the Chair

This seemingly benign tip helps set the suitable base for your posture. Many people have bad postures because they place their butt in the middle or towards the end of the chair. This causes them to lean/slouch forward and hunch since there is no support behind their backs to press against.

8. Get a Back Cushion

This was effective when I improved my posture. I bought a seat cushion and put it on the back of my chair. I make sure my back is wedging the cushion against the chair whenever I sit. The cushion will fall whenever I lean forward, reminding me to return to my proper posture.

9. Ground both your feet when standing or sitting.

This means having both feet planted flat on the floor and not resting my weight on a particular foot, which is a common habit. While sitting, try not to cross your legs. This helps to keep the upper part of our body straight.

10. Invest in a Good Bed and Pillow

Get a firm and soft mattress. Soft mattresses that you sink into may feel nice and comfy initially, but they are not suitable for your back and posture. For your pillow, consider investing in an orthopedic pillow. There are quite a few different designs in the market now. The most common is contour pillows, which arch and support your head – I have been using one since I was 17. Another type is the neck pillow, a horseshoe-shaped pillow that is great for traveling.

11. Avoid Carrying Heavy Items

Carrying heavy items is terrible for our shoulders and backs. Attempting to do so over an extended period gradually leads to hunched shoulders and backs. If you are a student, you do this every day with all the books for classes. It might be your laptop and work materials for professionals, which you must lunge around to and fro. If it’s impossible to reduce the load of things you carry, consider getting a trolley bag or roller bag—these are convenient and becoming commonplace.

12. Engage in Exercises That Strengthen Your Back

These include:

Pilates
Yoga
Exercise balls
Simple stretching

If you do sit-ups or crunches, ensure you are using the proper technique (click on the link for more details)—otherwise, you will end up hurting your back instead.

13. Get a Professional Assessment

If you have extremely bad posture and a history of back injuries or aches, you should visit a chiropractor or physical therapist for a professional assessment. They can advise you on how to better care for your back.

10 Exercises to Help You Reap the Health Benefits of Good Posture

woman working out - Is Good Posture Attractive

1. Planks: A Solid Core Exercise for Good Posture

A simple bodyweight exercise that targets your:

Rectus abdominis
Erector spinae
Other core muscles

You can make this exercise easier by doing it on your knees or progressing to more complex variations, like plank jacks and medicine ball planks.

2. Side Planks: A Must-Do for Posture Improvement

This plank variation targets your obliques while engaging your glutes and hip muscles. Side planks help reduce excessive lateral flexion of the spine and can improve your posture by addressing muscle imbalances contributing to poor posture.

3. Dead Bugs: An Anti-Extension Core Exercise

Dead bugs activate your deep core muscles and challenge your coordination. They can help improve your postural control, particularly during movement.

4. Bridges: Activate Your Posterior Chain

Bridges engage your entire posterior chain and can be difficult with single-leg or weighted variations. This movement targets the following to improve posture and stability your:

Glutes
Lower back
Hip muscles

5. Bird Dogs: A Great Exercise for Your Back

This low-intensity movement you’ll often see in yoga classes can help reduce lower back pain and improve your balance. Bird dogs promote core stability and coordination, enhancing your posture and athletic performance.

6. Good Mornings: An Exercise for Hinge Mechanics

Good mornings help develop your hip hinge mechanics, assisting in other lifts. This movement targets your posterior chain and can improve your posture by promoting proper mechanics during activity.

7. Deadlifts: The King of Posterior Chain Exercises

Deadlifts are the king of posterior chain exercises. This compound movement targets your:

Glutes Hamstrings
Lower back
Upper back
Core

Deadlifts can help improve your posture by strengthening muscles that support proper alignment, particularly of the spine.

8. Rows: A Key Exercise for Posture Improvement

Rows help develop a stronger upper body while engaging your core. This pulling exercise targets your upper back, helping to reduce excess tension in the muscles at the front of your shoulders that contribute to poor posture.

9. Hanging Leg Raises: A Challenging Core Exercise

Hanging leg raises are a full-body exercise that tests your grip and core strength. Beginners can start with hanging knee tucks or perform leg raises on the floor. This movement activates your deep core muscles to improve your posture and stability during other activities.

10. Russian Twists: Strengthen Your Rotational Muscles

Russian twists are great for rotational strength and building stronger obliques. These muscles help stabilize your spine during movement and improve your posture and athletic performance.