What Forward Head Posture Is Doing to Our Movement
Updated: Aug 21
Look around just about anywhere and you'll see it.
At the gym. At work. Sitting at a coffee shop. Waiting for a flight. Probably while you're reading this.
Head forward. Shoulders rounded. Eyes staring down at a screen.
I like to call it the "21st Century Nod."
Technology has changed an incredible amount about the way we live, but it has also changed the positions we spend enormous amounts of time in. Phones, laptops, tablets, driving, desk work and even our downtime can keep us sitting in similar positions for hours.
And eventually, our movement can reflect the positions we repeatedly live in.
Forward Head Posture Isn't Just About How Someone Looks
Forward head posture describes a position where the head sits farther forward relative to the trunk.
It's easy to look at that and think, "They need to stand up straighter."
But from a movement perspective, I'm much more interested in why they're there and how they move out of it.
Forward head posture has been associated with neck pain and changes in muscle activity, proprioception and breathing patterns. But that doesn't mean every person with forward head posture is injured.
It doesn't mean posture alone causes every headache or every case of neck pain.
And it certainly doesn't mean our job as fitness professionals is to diagnose somebody based on the way they sit.
But it does give us something worth paying attention to.
Especially when the client sitting in front of us also has limited cervical movement, poor thoracic mobility, difficulty controlling their shoulder blades, or constantly complains about feeling stiff through their neck and upper body.
That's where this becomes a movement conversation.
Don't Just Tell Someone to "Sit Up Straight"
This is where I think the traditional posture conversation gets too simplistic.
"Shoulders back."
"Chin tucked."
"Sit up straight."
Okay...but then what?
Someone consciously holding themselves in a different position for five minutes doesn't necessarily address the movement limitations that may be contributing to the problem.
And asking someone who works at a computer eight hours a day to maintain "perfect posture" every waking minute probably isn't realistic either.
I'd rather get them moving.
Change positions throughout the day. Get away from the screen. Stand up. Walk. Rotate. Reach. Extend. Give the body some variety.
Then, when we're actually training them, we can look at how the neck is moving and how it interacts with everything around it.
Sometimes the Neck Is the Bottleneck
If I'm working with someone who presents with forward head posture, neck stiffness, or limited cervical movement, I'm absolutely going to look at the surrounding areas.
How well does the thoracic spine extend and rotate?
What's happening at the shoulders?
Can the scapulae move and stabilize effectively?
Are limitations elsewhere contributing to what we're seeing at the neck?
But here's the other side of that conversation...
Sometimes the neck itself is the bottleneck.
We don't need to be afraid of addressing it directly.
Cervical rotation, flexion, extension, lateral flexion, controlled movement, muscle activation, stability and strength can all have a place in an appropriate mobility program.
Sometimes a client needs thoracic mobility to help improve what's happening at the neck.
Sometimes improving neck mobility may help unlock movement we're trying to improve at the shoulders or thoracic spine.
And sometimes someone who rarely moves their neck beyond staring straight ahead at a computer simply benefits from spending more time moving it through the ranges of motion it's designed to access.
That's why I don't believe in automatically chasing the site of discomfort OR automatically avoiding it.
Look at the person. Look at how they move. Find the bottleneck. Then address what actually needs attention.
Mobility Gives Us More Than "Better Posture"
This is where mobility training gives us a much better strategy than simply telling someone to fix their posture.
We can work on cervical mobility.
We can improve thoracic extension and rotation.
We can address shoulder mobility and scapular control.
We can strengthen and activate musculature responsible for better movement and stability.
And we can give clients opportunities to move through ranges of motion they may barely access during the other 23 hours of their day.
The goal isn't to force everyone into one supposedly perfect posture.
It's to give people more movement options.
That's an important distinction.
Posture Isn't a Position We Need to Fear
I don't want clients afraid to look down at their phones.
I don't want them thinking their spine needs to remain perfectly stacked every second of every day.
The human body was built to flex, extend, rotate, bend and MOVE.
The problem isn't necessarily that we occasionally get into these positions.
The bigger concern is when we spend so much time in a limited number of positions that we start losing access to the others.
That's the conversation I want fitness professionals having.
We're not diagnosing forward head posture.
We're not promising to cure someone's neck pain.
We're looking at how the person moves, identifying mobility and movement limitations within our scope, and giving their body more opportunities to do what it was designed to do.
Because our screens probably aren't going anywhere.
Our laptops aren't going anywhere.
Desk jobs aren't going anywhere.
So telling everyone to stop using technology isn't much of a strategy.
Helping people maintain the mobility, strength and movement capacity to handle the world they actually live in?
That's coaching.
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