Your Posture; It’s Not All For the Birds!
Clients of AOC surely hear “pigeon toed!” in their sleep. Yes, we do sound like a broken record but we promise, it’s all for the greater good of the body! When we perform an initial assessment, majority of the people we see look like a duck. No, they don’t have a beak, don’t quack or waddle, but they may have some similarities to a duck such as anterior pelvic tilt or a “duck stance”.
A duck stance is when someone is standing naturally and their feet turn outwards more than 10 degrees. You may not even be aware that you’re standing like that, but it’s most likely not a one time thing, but a nasty habit that’s been allowed to creep up on your posture over a course of time.
Why is this a bad thing? It’s not on all facets, but from an anatomical view, a duck stance is a sign of weakness in the trunk, poor movement in the hips and weak glutes.
Many problems occurring at the hips, branch outwards to other areas of the body. For example, poor hip mobility and tight hip flexors is often the culprit for anterior pelvic tilt (aka. Donald Duck’s stance). When the hip flexors are tight, they pull the pelvis and the lumbar spine forward, causing an excessive arch in the low back and the bum to stick out too much from behind! Throw in the weak glutes, and now you’ve got some low back pain issues!
Not only that, but with a duck stance, this causes weakness and tightness in many of the muscles in the legs, such as the gastrocnemious, Sartorius, and biceps femoris. All that tightness and weakness stresses out the joints like the knees and ankles so it may not be a coincidence if you stand like a duck and suffer from these pains!
There are many ways to help fix duck feet, but we start by over-correcting with a pigeon toe stance. So as repetitive as we may sound with our “pigeon toe” talk, correcting duck feet can have amazing long term benefits!
The takeaway:
If you have to choose a bird to emulate, go with the pigeon; your body with thank you!
Image Credit via Flickr.