Standing posture exercise: Exercise for standing posture

Physical therapy

﻿Hi there, my name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist. Thank you for joining me today, where we are going to be continuing talking about posture. But today we will be looking a bit closer at standing posture and we'll begin with a recap of what standing posture is. And then we'll look a little closer at some standing exercises, and there will be an activity where you can do an exercise in standing, and there'll be a standing twist to give you a nice stretch for your back. There isn't any equipment you need for this. You just need yourself. And if you need any help from a parent or carer, you might want to get them now. I would just like to give you a little message from our team. "We as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. So you may be watching this as a child by yourself, or you might be with a parent or carer. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. And each lesson we will aim to give you some ideas and activities that can be carried out either at home or in school. You may already have specific programmes that you're using or advice that has been given to you by your child's school or therapist. So please make sure that you're using any information I'm giving you alongside anything you already have. And if you do have any questions or would like help tailoring this to their needs, then please make sure you get in contact with your local therapy service." I'd like to begin with a recap of why is good standing posture important. So it's important because we need to keep our backs healthy. So we need to remember to keep the S-shape of our spines. If you remember back to lesson one, where we looked at what is posture, we looked at the model of the spine, and I've got the spine here again, so we can have a little recap of the natural curves of your spine. So this is the view from the side, and you've got your head up here, and this is the base of your spine, where your hips and your tailbone are, and here you've got your natural curves of your spine. So when we're in this standing postures, we want to try to be keeping and maintaining those natural curves that produce good alignment for our body. And if we've got good alignment of our spine, and good alignment in weightbearing, it will help our bones, our joints, and overall our body parts stay really healthy. And good standing posture is important because it means that our muscles will be working more efficiently, so we'll have more energy for standing activities. And a good standing posture is also important because remember it helps with communication, your breathing and digestion. So if you've got a good standing posture, all those bodily processes will be happening well. And if you think about communication, that's all linked with your breathing and the shape of your chest. So if you're rounded in your back, your space here for breathing and your ability to be able to project your voice will be smaller. So if you're standing with a good, nice aligned posture, you'll be able to project your voice further and you'll be able to speak more clearly. Having a good standing posture will also give you better balance and stability, which will help for other movements. And it will also help with not just your static, still posture, but also when you look at your moving posture. Let's recap on some points to remember for standing posture. So remember to think about when you're carrying bags, if you've got a school bag with two straps, if you've got a backpack, that's a really good idea to carry your books in because it distributes the weight evenly. If you're carrying a bag on one shoulder, make sure you try and alternate it with the other side so that your evening out the weight. And also if you're carrying bags in hands, try and even out the weight so that you've got even distribution across both sides of your body. Really think about the correct way to pick up objects. So if you bending down to pick something off the floor, if you're trying to do it quickly, you might arch your back and bend down. Remember that you need to be using your muscles in your legs to bend your knees so that you're using the strong muscles in your thighs to do that rather than bending your back and putting it in awkward positions. And readjust your position. This is just reminding you to always think about your posture and you don't have to stay in the same position for a long period of time. If you're in a position and you're feeling uncomfortable, come out of that position, have a little movement break, maybe readjust your position and come back into it so you can feel more comfortable again. And the last one there exercises and stretches. If you've been given exercises or stretches by a therapist and you're meant to be doing them in your daily routine, then it's just a little reminder to try and do those stretches. So let's think about some stretches that you can do in standing. If you think about the standing position, when you're standing, your spine is able to move forwards and backwards, and it can also move to the side. So you can do a side stretch. And also your back can twist, or sometimes this is called rotate. I can show you on the model spine how those movements can happen. So here, your spine can come forwards. Your spine can come backwards. So something called extension, and your spine can move that way to the side. So if I do it from there, I do it from there, you'll see that you have some movement going that way, and you also have some movement going the other way, and this is a little bit harder to see on the screen, but the spine does have a twisting movement. So that is called rotation. And the activity we're going to look at shortly will show you an idea for a spinal twist. I'm just going to talk you through an exercise where you can stretch your back with a twist. A demonstration is going to follow, but I'll just talk you through the basic activity. You're going to stand in a good standing position with your arms forward, with your elbows bent, crossing your forearms. And the first thing you're going to do is turn gently to your right and look over your shoulder and hold, and then you'll do the same thing, but to the left and hold. After you've watched the video, if you pause it and then you can complete the exercise and then remember to restart when you're done. I'm going to demonstrate a standing stretch for your back. So the first exercise you can try is a stretching back twist. So try this activity in a standing position. So you want your feet about hip distance apart, you want your arms forward with your elbows bent and your forearms crossed. So I'll show you from the front and then from the side. And then you're going to turn to one side and look over your shoulder, and you're going to come back to the middle and you're going to look over the other side. So you should feel the stretch in the other side of your back. Good. And then you're going to come look the other way, and back to the middle. And then you're going to look over the other shoulder and get a nice stretch in your spine, making sure you've got good alignment in your back with your pelvis and your hips over your knees and over your feet. I've got a couple of ideas of how you can extend this activity. The first you will either need a broom or a long stick. I'm using a crutch and I will show you a good way to do this one. So what you want to do is to put the stick behind, under your arms, like this, so behind your back. So I'll show you from the side, and then I'll show you from the back. So you want it like this underneath your arms. And the idea here is that you do the same exercise, but it will let you have a bit of resistance. So you can rotate a little bit further when you do it. And then from the front you've got it underneath your arms and you're going to just stretch to one side and then you can stretch to the other side. And you could also take the stretch a little bit further. So you'll see to begin with, I just took the stretch a little way. So to make it a little bit more challenging, you could extend the stretch. So you could just take it to a point where you feel a stretch, stay there for a few moments and increase the stretch a little bit more. And to also extend it, you could hold the stretch for longer. Some ways to simplify this activity are to do it for a shorter amount of time, and don't take the stretches as far. So take them 'til you just feel the stretch and stay there. Another way for the standing twist is to just keep your arms by your side, instead of them being here, or with the stick behind your back. So just keeping them relaxed by your side and just do a nice stretch with your arms by your side. So you're looking over your shoulder and coming back to the middle. And again, you're looking over your shoulder and coming back to the middle. So give those a try and see how you get on. So you just saw some ways to extend and simplify, but I'll just talk them through as they're written down here. You can make the activity more challenging by placing a broom handle, a walking stick, or a crutch that I had behind your back and under your arms. You can also turn further. So you can get to a point in the stretch where you feel the stretch, and if you feel you can go a little bit further, you can do so. And also you can hold the stretch for longer and increase the number of stretches that you do over a period of time. To make it slightly easier, as demonstrated, you can keep your arms relaxed by your side and just do a nice gentle twist. You can also take the stretch, not quite as far, and you can hold the stretch for a shorter amount of time. If you want to pause the video, you could try these now. Now that brings us to the end of our lesson today. So thank you for joining me. I hope you found some useful tips and ideas for your standing posture, and I hope you gave the activity a try at the standing stretching exercise. Please join me next time for lesson 12, where we will be looking at standing posture again, but we'll be looking a little bit closer at a standing strengthening exercise for your back muscles. All that leaves me to say now, is thanks again for joining me. Take care and I'll see you very soon. Goodbye.

Standing posture exercise: Exercise for standing posture

Standing posture exercise: Exercise for standing posture

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

Lesson slides

Lesson details

Key learning points

Content guidance

Supervision

Licence

Lesson video