Why posture braces don’t work.

To change anything, we first need to understand what it is. Posture is your position, where you body rests in space. As well as how you are supporting that position, which muscles your using to stop you collapsing to the ground.

let's look at the logic of posture braces. The idea is, posture braces, will improve your posture, and they’ll do this by artificially supporting your body into a new position.

The first, thing to consider, is is that a good position. Like, is that even where we want to end up posturally? And secondly, even if it was, does being put and held in a position, by an external brace, mean that you can then hold it yourself?

Positionally the majority of these braces adjust the shoulder blades, which is not a good place to begin. The shoulder blades are not the problem, they are a symptom. You can’t address anything by treating a symptom.

Shoulder blades position, is determined by the torso position underneath. IF the torso is collapsed and leaned forward, the shoulder blades will rest forward on that shape. They are like a jacket, a shirt, they take on whatever shape is underneath them.

If the torso is upright and round, the shoulder blades will sit back, this has NOTHING to do with puling the shoulder blades back together. THAT IS A SYMPTOM of the torso position.

Right of the bat, we are in hot water, there isn’t REALLY a brace, that can impact the whole torso position meaningfully, beyond perhaps strapping a steel pipe onto the spine somehow.

But lets say it was lets say SOMEHOW, we have a full torso brace, and that its not just upright, but also round somehow? Which is basically impossible? That too wouldn’t solve the problem either, as HIP position determines much of TORSO position.

Tilted forward hips, cause a low back curve, which cause an upper spine compensation, which cause rounded shoulders. You can’t just pick a random bit of the of this chain, change its position roughly and vaguely and expect it to impact the rest. It’s not just now bodies work.

Ok, so positionally, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not even putting you in the right position, or even changing the position of things that need to be changed. Then to add to the fact that the second half, external artificial support also makes little sense.

You need to learn to support ANY changed position YOURSELF, you literally aren’t learning that if you have a brace, a brace is doing that for you.

As soon as you remove the brace, you are going to remove any changes, maintaining a position of the body unless it is perfectly stacked, is about mobility, and muscular support. Braces could in theory, maybe, help with mobility, but they aren’t teaching you how to use the muscles you need to use to be in any given position. Odds are you’ll just collapse.

This shows up, when we look at the data from other brace like interventions. FOOT support, eg foot insole things (if you have a collapsed arch) are super underwhelming. You need to learn to stand up the foot yourself muscularly, not just squish it into a different position).

This is because fundamentally putting someone into a position solves nothing, they have to be able to SUPPORT that position independently, and a brace just doesn’t teach you how to do that.

And when we look at the hard data for these postural correction braces themselves, when thinking about what we just covered. It would be extremely surprising if there were clinical studies backing the efficacy of this intervention, and surprise surprise, there aren’t. There are a bunch of wishy washy, biased studies saying people and look subjectively a bit better or there shoulder angle changes 5 degrees when they put one on, but there aren’t any rigorous studies on clinical populations, no long term studies, no real data on pain. Just junk trying to sell bits of plastic to people on the internet.

BUT ALSO, these braces, biomechanically speaking, are probably worse than ineffective. They are in theory dangerous. 

If you are just pulling shoulder blades back, but they still naturally trying to come forward as a result of the unchanged torso position underneath, you’re going to have 2x forces pulling in opposite directions, and something will get caught in the middle, probably rotator cuffs, with the weight of the arm pulling downwards out of its socket, and the shoulder blades moving in the opposite direction.

I really wouldn’t recommend these things to anyone.

So, why are they so damn popular then? Because people want easy fixes to hard problems. If they worked, people would all be working around with great posture, but that’s just not the case at all.

However, its not all doom and gloom, solutions do exist, but they, like all good things, require time, commitment and hard work. I’ve personally changed my posture dramatically, and you can too. If you’re interested in starting this journey for yourself, check out the consultations page for more info.