The human body is a machine. It adapts to your thoughts and its most frequently-held positions. It doesn’t judge. If you spend all day slouching, it will work spinal muscles extra hard to compensate. If you spend all day craning your neck, it will build hard collagen there for reinforcement. But knowledge is power. This article explains how to use muscle memory to your advantage. Boost health, happiness, and productivity — on autopilot!
Poor postures cause stiffness in the body’s fascia system. This is a fibrous matrix that lays over the organs, muscles, and bones. As muscles adapt to good or bad postures, fascia reacts to physical force by producing collagen. This makes fascia stronger and thicker(1) in support of adopted postures.
Healthy toddlers are born with super flexibility and good body mechanics. By the age of 10, their bones begin to harden. Then, collagen in muscle tissues also hardens(2). With poor posture habits, they’ll harden in all the wrong spots, reinforcing a twisted spine as ‘normal’.
This explains why the majority of adults suffer from anterior pelvic tilt. One American study(3) found 80% of men and women in its test group with this condition.
An anterior tilt forces the body to tighten on one side and weaken on the other. Sitting with a slouch tightens the lower back and weakens abdominal muscles. As a result, quad muscles tighten, while hamstrings get longer and weaker.
Knowledge + Muscle Memory = Power
A growing idea in the physical therapy world is that people adopt sloppy postures because they forget what healthy ones are! That’s because muscle memory works both ways.
If you passively adapt to sloppy habits, those will become your ‘normal’ state of being. That leaves you vulnerable to back pain — with no awareness of the cause!
On the flip side, a therapist can teach you how to proactively train muscles into healthy habits. To kickstart the process, all they do is give you postural awareness.
Recipe: Biomechanical Targets + Muscle Memory = Perfect Posture + Benefits
The brain takes the path of least resistance. By identifying — and then striving towards — clear targets, your body will follow. After a few days of practice, healthy sitting mechanics will slide into your subconscious as your ‘new normal.
- Step 1: educate your mind about healthy sitting mechanics.
- Step 2: use that knowledge to train your body.
Orthopedic Physical Therapist Tanya Snowden: “once you train the body to know what the proper movement is, then body mechanics become so much easier.”(4)
Testimonial: Gaming Chair + Muscle Memory
Muscle memory changed my life. Back in 2017, I was skinny-fat, broke, depressed, and chronically tired. Then, I bought a gaming chair. But I had no idea how to use it. As a result, it made my back problems worse!
But then, I learned the proper body mechanics. Like all ergonomic chairs, gaming chairs are designed to support neutral sitting positions. Once my mind grasped the neutral concept, it became easy to train my body.
At first, my hamstrings were so tight that it was impossible to plant my feet. After a few days of practice, I had mastered neutral sitting! After a week, I began sitting with good posture automatically — without effort!
As healthy sitting muscle memory locked in, an unexpected surprise emerged. Without muscle strain, I found myself with too much energy to sit still. To burn off the excess, I returned to the gym — after several years off.
Then, muscle memory kicked in for a second time. My old muscles that I had trained years before resurfaced quickly. After a year and a half, I went from fat and broke and slumped to shredded.
Five Years later
Five years after buying my first gaming chair, my neutral posture habits are rock-solid. As a result, I don’t need to sit straight all the time. When working, I like to sit in crisp upright postures (around 105°), often without the headrest.
When I need to stare in space for heavy thinking, I might put one foot up. When watching Youtube videos, I like to pop the recline back to around 120°. Basically, I sit however I want — 30% of the time.
To keep my muscle memory on point, I spend the rest sitting in crisp neutral postures. That ensures my healthy sitting habits remain the dominant muscle memory in my routine.
Posture Therapy Using Muscle Memory
Anyone who works full-time at a desk can supercharge their efforts with this proactive approach. Ergonomic knowledge plus muscle memory can lock healthy habits into your arsenal for a lifetime.
The ChairsFX Ergonomic Advice Library simplifies all the knowledge you need to hack human ergonomics in your favor. Then, muscle memory will tie the whole scheme together.
Circa 2022, ergonomic science is very clear and uncomplicated. With a firm grasp of the fundamentals — plus muscle memory awareness — you can kick ergonomists and chiropractors to the curb.
Fatigue Destroys Discipline
Sloppy sitting habits and excessive text neck force muscles to work extra hard to compensate. That’s one reason why lower back pain is the leading cause of disability in 160 countries(5).
A huge side-effect of overworked muscles is chronic exhaustion. Around 25% of American adults claim to suffer from chronic fatigue(6). However, only 0.5% meet the clinical criteria for having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a neurological disease). The rest simply have crappy habits.
The problem is that when people are tired, discipline falls apart. When adults suffer from physical or mental stress, they let their habits go(7). Binge eating, irregular sleep habits, and excessive drinking are common.
The good news is that you can turn this around using a good ergonomic chair — in less than a week. By forcing yourself to adhere to neutral postures, you give your body’s facial system the time it needs to adapt.
Fascia Hardens Around Frequent Positions
Poor postures cause stiffness in the body’s fascia system. This is a fibrous matrix that lays over the organs, muscles, and bones. As muscles adapt to good or bad postures, fascia reacts to the physical force by producing collagen. This makes fascia stronger and thicker(8).
With good posture, fascia hardens around muscles to fortify healthy positions. Then, sitting up straight becomes effortless. But with poor posture, the fascial network hardens in the wrong spots.
For instance, desk workers often suffer from tight lower backs in non-ergonomic chairs. As another example, text neck distorts and then hardens soft tissues and joints in the cervical spine. That places intense pressure on the spinal cord and nearby nerve roots.
But the reverse is also true. If you put enough effort into adopting neutral sitting styles, your muscles will adapt. Then, your fascial system will harden to support those positions. As a result, adhering to neutral posture styles will get easier.
With enough practice, this technique will creep into your subconscious. Then, you’ll enjoy good posture all the time — without any conscious effort!
Muscles And Fascia Hold Tactical Memories
Muscle memory has been a staple of gym-bro science for decades. The general idea is that if you build big muscles once, your muscles will remember the process. So if you lose your muscles and try to rebuild, it will happen faster.
Circa 2022, most muscle memory studies are speculative. Many suggest that memories get stored in both the muscles and fascia.
Most cells have a single nucleus. Muscles have several called ‘myonuclei ‘. Exercise strains the muscles to the point of damage. Then, muscles add new cells and myonuclei to patch up the damage (hypertrophy). This increases the muscle mass, making that part of the body stronger.
If you stop exercising, muscle mass will lose mass in a process called ‘atrophy’. However, only muscle proteins are lost. Myonuclei remain — for as long as 15 years! (9)
Meanwhile, a growing body of research suggests that the fascia also holds memories. Each cell in the fascial network sends and receives signals. These contain memories but also mechanometabolic information. That information helps it to prepare for alterations in its natural environment(10).
In either case, the bottom line is that muscles have the ability to adapt and remember. The more conscious attention you give to good posture, the more quickly it will become a subconscious process. Then, muscle memory ensures that good posture is yours — for life!
With awareness of this process, turning around poor posture habits becomes easier. Instead of passively accepting sloppy habits, you can treat your body like a mecha skin. As Dr. Snowden advised, the key is to “train the body to know what the proper movement is.”
The process is similar to upgrading a mecha suit:
- Upload the necessary software instructions.
- Give the mecha time to adapt to the new rules.
- Do practice runs while the fascia systems harden.
- Ride upgraded mecha into battle.
- Store the new upgrades in deep muscle memory for 15 years.
Easy Muscle Memory Wins
If you suffer from chronic back pain and lethargy, here are three easy muscle memory wins. Treat these tips like software that you can upgrade your skin suit with:
Improve Posture With A Gaming Chair
All types of ergonomic chairs (including gaming chairs) are designed to support neutral postures. As a result, healthy neutral sitting looks the same in all ergonomic chairs:
To get started with this method, your chair needs three components. Adjustable lumbar support preserves a healthy lower back curve. Adjustable armrests support your neck and shoulders. A reclining backrest lets you customize support angles — 100-115° is the sweet spot for desk work.
Going from terrible posture to clean neutral ones should take around one week. After around two weeks, neutral sitting should slip into your subconscious and run on autopilot.
Fix Text Neck With A Mid-Back Chair
A human head weighs around 10-12 pounds. When using mobile devices, most people crane their necks forward by 45°. That angle exerts 50-60 extra pounds on the neck. This places intense pressure on the spine, cervical ligaments, and surrounding muscles.
As muscles adapt to these positions, users suffer pain in the neck, shoulders, back, and arms. After muscles adapt, the whole spine falls out of alignment into a severe kyphotic state.
Recent research into text neck syndrome has found a head tilt of 0° as the healthiest for long periods of mobile computing. As luck would have it, a 0° head tilt is a key part of healthy sitting in mid-back ergonomic chairs.
Text Neck: Ergonomic Problems And Solutions
Herman Miller Text Neck Fix
This method doesn’t prevent people from craning their necks while texting. Instead, it seeks to override dirty muscle memories with healthier ones.
All of Herman Miller’s ergonomic office chairs are mid-back. The company insists that you should not use a headrest with their chairs. “Leaning your head back on a headrest while in an upright position would be improper posture.”
The science checks out. Adding a headrest to a mid-back chair creates a psychological comfort expectation. That compels users to tilt their heads back to reach the backrest. But doing so forces the thorax to rotate rearward.
Without a headrest, Herman Miller chairs compel you to keep your head balanced. That yields the least muscle strain and is thus the most comfortable position.
The Herman Miller Embody does this better than any chair in the world. A big reason is that it supports the thoracic spine first and the lumbar spine second. With targeted support for the upper back, keeping your head balanced is very easy.
Don’t worry if you can’t afford a $1795 Embody. Any mid-back chair (with adjustable arms and lumbar support) can do the job.
Summary: get a good mid-back ergonomic chair. Then spend a week training your neck to hold a 0° head tilt while computing. That will help to override text neck symptoms.
Build Muscle In The Gym
Once you recover from poor posture, prepare to be shocked by how much energy that leaves on the table! That’s the first big payoff for adopting healthy postures. Once your spine aligns, muscles will work with the efficiency they were designed for.
That yields a massive, life-changing surge of excess energy. Instead of feeling tired all the time, you’ll find plenty of power to play with.
With energy comes the discipline to follow through on projects. You should also find plenty to put into exercise. Along that route, we can follow the lead of the world’s top esports stars.
Pro Esports Fitness Formula
In 2022, most of the world’s top esports teams use ergonomic gaming chairs. Most also work with mental coaches, nutritionists, and physical therapists.
Industry-wide, it’s well-established that comfortable, healthy, rested players perform better. ChairsFX spoke to a few esports therapists working with top teams like Cloud9, Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses, etc.
All agreed on these priorities (in order of importance):
- Health trinity: regular exercise, good nutrition, sound sleep.
- Good posture: try to sit straight in whichever type of chair you use.
- Frequent breaks: breaks reset the brain, boost blood flow, and work sedentary muscles.
- Good ergonomic chair: choose whichever type aligns with your preferences.
Bottom line: good posture will give you more energy to play with. Parlay that into healthy lifestyle habits to gain even more power! From there, life can become a thrilling upward spiral with no end!
2022 Deskwork Priorities: Fitness + Posture Beats Technostress
Case Study: 0° Neck Habit In 5 Days
The previous examples are easy, beginner-friendly wins. Once your posture habits are generally in shape, achieving a consistent 0° neck tilt is the final thing to master. Recently, I decided to try this with some help from three leading esports therapists.
To gauge my default seated neck position, I removed the headrest from my gaming chair. Then, I photographed myself in a relaxed position.
Dr. William Duncan calls this a passive style of support. “You’re resting more on the shape of the joints/bones rather than using soft tissue (muscles, tendons, ligaments).
Dr. Jordan Tsai serves on Secretlab’s Ergonomics Advisory Board. He advised me to try using a 100° backrest tilt while focusing on maintaining a 0° neck. It works!
On day one, sitting super-straight felt alien. As a result, I had to pay lots of conscious attention to my neck while I sat.
By day five, muscle memory had almost completely taken over. Then, it became an automatic habit needing very little conscious attention.
- Day 1: feels comfortable. But my head kept tilting forward every few minutes.
- Day 2: still comfortable. My head is tilting forward around 20% less.
- Day 3: sitting with a straight neck starts feeling normal. But I feel mild DOMS (workout pain) in my back and stomach muscles.
- Day 4: DOMS fade away; head tilt is getting easy to catch and correct.
- Day 5: I’m standing 1cm taller and my shoulders feel more open.
Conclusion
The human body adapts to the positions it holds most often. Then, muscles and fascia memorize these to run on autopilot in the subconscious. By arming yourself with ergonomic targets, you can hack this concept.
Changing poor posture habits can take less than a week! You’ll need an ergonomic chair, a grasp of neutral posture techniques, and discipline. Struggle once for a few days to enjoy good posture habits for life!
Recipe: Biomechanical Targets + Muscle Memory = Perfect Posture + Benefits
Sounds good? The only question left is what type of chair to use. Mid-back office chairs can reverse text neck syndrome by locking your head into a 0° tilt. But they’re nowhere near as comfy as full-back gaming chairs.
In fact, strict and casual neutral styles are both good for your back. The former is more precise; the latter is more comfortable.
With frequent breaks, regular exercise, and a healthy lifestyle, both work well. Which is better for you? Find out here:
Gaming Chairs Vs Ergonomic Office Chairs: Comfort Vs Focus
Footnotes
- Chris Watts. ‘What is fascial fitness, and why should we care?’ News & Trends, July 11, 2019. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/3018002/what-fascial-fitness-and-why-should-we-care, (accessed 10 April 2022).
- Sole Motion Podiatry. ‘My Child Is Very Flexible – Is This Normal?’ April 18, 2021. https://solemotionpodiatry.com/child-flexible-normal/, (accessed 10 April 2022).
- Lee Herrington. ‘Assessment of the degree of pelvic tilt within a normal asymptomatic population’, Manual Therapy, Volume 16, Issue 6, December 2011, Pages 646-648. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1356689X11000816, (accessed 20 Feb. 2022).
- Karen Gerberry. ‘How Avoiding Back Pain Could Be As Basic As Muscle Memory’. July 23, 2019. https://blog.vingapp.com/how-avoiding-back-pain-could-be-as-basic-as-muscle-memory, (accessed 20 Feb. 2022).
- ‘Musculoskeletal conditions’. WHO Fact Sheets, 8 February 2021. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/musculoskeletal-conditions (accessed 12 March 2022).
- Dr. Stephen Gluckman. ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’, Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania, September 2021. https://www.msdmanuals.com/professional/special-subjects/chronic-fatigue-syndrome/chronic-fatigue-syndrome, (accessed 11 April 2022).
- Karen Angelo. ‘New Research Links Stress at Work to Unhealthy Lifestyles’, Umas Lowell, 2 Feb. 2016, https://www.uml.edu/news/stories/2016/workerstress.aspx, (accessed 19 Feb. 2022).
- Chris Watts. ‘What is fascial fitness, and why should we care?’ News & Trends, July 11, 2019. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/3018002/what-fascial-fitness-and-why-should-we-care, (accessed 10 April 2022).
- J C Bruusgaard, et al. ‘Myonuclei acquired by overload exercise precede hypertrophy and are not lost on detraining’ Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2010 Aug 24. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20713720/, (accessed 10 April 2022).
- Bruno Bordoni, et al. ‘The Awareness of the Fascial System’. Cureus. 2018 Oct 1;10(10):e3397. DOI: 10.7759/cureus.3397, (accessed 10 April 2022).
