If you’ve ever caught yourself slouching at your desk and immediately jerked your shoulders back and straightened your spine, you know the struggle. Within minutes, you’re slumped over again.

Here’s why: Rigid corrections are impossible to maintain because they treat posture like a static position to hold rather than a dynamic skill to train.

Good posture isn’t something you freeze into place — it’s a fluid, balanced and aligned state that you build with proper breathing, strength and mobility.

Why posture-correcting cues backfire

Proper breathing can improve your posture, enhance your mobility, and relieve aches and pains.

Proper breathing can improve your posture, enhance your mobility, and relieve aches and pains. Aaron Lockwood

Following the age-old directives to “sit up straight” and “pull your shoulders back” might give the appearance of good posture. However, that approach is not only exhausting and ineffective but can also cause a cascade of problems.

When you force yourself to sit stiffly upright, squeezing your shoulder blades together, you create tension in your mid-back and neck. And to maintain the unnatural illusion of a “straight” spine, people tend to thrust their chests and ribs forward, hyperextending their mid-back and compressing their lower back. The resulting misalignment of the rib cage and pelvis compromise the ability to breathe deeply, hindering diaphragm function and weakening core stability.

Bodies are designed to move, so repeatedly attempting to hold a fixed position that doesn’t support coordinated movement leads to fatigue, stiffness, weakness and even chronic pain.

Posture is a whole-body coordination system

Think about your day. Even if you’re somewhat sedentary, you’re not a mannequin standing or sitting motionless; you’re breathing, bending, reaching, turning, walking, carrying items and more. It’s the coordination of your breath, strength and mobility working together to maintain functional posture that moves you through all the demands of your life.

That’s why, in my work with athletes, I train movement patterns — not static positions. Yankees Major League Baseball All-Star Aaron Judge once told me that after incorporating breathing and mobility work into his training, he felt the impact on his posture immediately. “Not only did I feel freedom in my torso and hips,” he said, “I almost felt like I was maybe a little taller.”