Apart from just Pilates, there are also lots of other little life hacks that can help to keep our posture in good check. Here are 5 tips that you can incorporate into your daily life, to help you maintain good posture, so that you will feel like your strongest, most poised self.

1. Ditch the heavy handbag
Having an overweight handbag slung over one shoulder makes it harder to keep that chest upright and can cause postural asymmetry. A proper fitting back pack might be a better option, to more evenly distribute the load, or better yet, do a handbag overhaul and reduce the weight that you are carrying around with you every day where you can.

2. Time to review your work or study chair
Most of us spend up to a fifth of our whole lives on the office work chairs, so lets make sure it is doing it’s best by us! You want to be feeling well supported at your desk, so make sure your work chair is set up to suit your individual needs, and fits your build, and height.

3. Think tall
You don’t see much slouching when models are strutting down the catwalk, and you shouldn’t be slouching when you walk down the street either. A tall spine, whilst supporting its natural curvatures, is the key. Different postural cues will work for different people, but a good one might be to imagine a string from the base of your spine, up through the crown of your head, lengthening and lifting you up. And keep a broad (not rounded) chest – this might mean cutting down on the texting or scrolling time!

4. The mirror is your best friend
The mirror is your best friend during all of your workouts. That’s because it gives you valuable visual feedback as to your posture and how you are moving. Doing an exercise with good posture and form always trumps doing a more advanced exercise with not so great form. So use your mirror to make sure your posture is on point before, during and after each exercise.

5. Pilates (But of course!)
With Pilates workouts, each exercise is performed with the right alignment and posture in check first. Pilates also works to train the endurance in the deeper abdominal core muscles as well as the stability muscles around the pelvis and middle back. Working these smaller muscles helps to maintain overall posture. These are usually those little hard to find muscles that give you the slow Pilates burn as your instructor says just 5 more reps!

I hope these postural tips help and I hope you feel that little bit more poised as you get on with your day!

Mari x