When people want to grow taller, they often think about doing certain exercises and increasing their growth hormone levels. That is great and those can help you grow taller, but most people fail to understand how important posture actually is if you want to increase your height. If you think about it, it actually makes sense, your spine is responsible for about 80% of your overall height, this means if you have bad posture and “slouch”, you will be harming your height potential. The good news is posture is easily correctable, and when you do correct it you will straighten out your spine and can potentially add a few inches to your height.
I understand there will be a lot of people who are skeptical about this method because most people think you really can’t grow taller after puberty. However, this method works so well because you are just getting the most out of your height, you aren’t reopening your growth plates or anything like that. Most people are about two inches shorter than they should be simply because they have compressed their spine through bad posture, so when you correct your posture you straighten out your spine and that adds height.
Why Does This Work So Well?
Like we mentioned above, the spine is responsible for over 80% of your total body height, but after years of lying down and sitting in positions that are considered “comfortable” but really bad for posture, carrying around heavy backpacks at school, and leaning to one side or the other when standing up, we are throwing our spine off and compressing it which will make us shorter than we should be.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t get the height back. If you focus on increasing your posture you can actually get the height back rather quickly.
What You Need To Avoid
Before we go into what you should actually be doing to increase your height, it is important that we talk about some of the things you need to avoid. Throughout the next couple weeks, be sure to keep the following in mind and avoid them all:
“Slouching while you are sitting in a chair” Lying on your side. I know a lot of you sleep on your side, but it really isn’t good for your spine at all.Don’t curl up in the fetal position when you go to bed. This compresses your spine and prevents you from growing.If you have to carry bags such as backpacks, make sure they stay light. Don’t carry all your bags at once.
By just avoiding those things that should naturally help improve your posture. However, if you want to get the most out of your height then you can actively do some thing that will help improve your posture.
Things You Can Do To Improve Posture
By far the best way to improve your posture is to do stretches that are focused on your spine. You should be doing these stretches twice per day, right when you wake up in the morning and right before you go to bed. If you can only do them once per day that is ok, but you will get the best results if you start doing them twice per day.
The next thing you want to be aware of is your posture when standing. Most people have really tight chest muscle and weak back muscles, this causes the shoulder to rate forward and when this happens you start to hunch a bit. When you are standing and walking around, it is important to keep your posture in mind. You want to pinch your shoulder blades together and don’t let your shoulders roll forward. If you aren’t sure whether or not you are doing it right, what you can do is hold a pencil in each hand. You want to pencils to be pointing straight forward, if the pencils are pointing toward each other then roll your shoulders back even more.
Now I know a lot of you are not going to like this next thing you can do to increase your height but it really does work well, you should start sleeping on your back without a pillow. This might make it difficult to sleep at first but your body will get used to it after a while and it will feel normal. A pillow puts your upper spine at an awkward angle and causes a forward head tilt which will affect your posture. Try to go a week without a pillow and not only will you improve your posture but you will actually feel a lot better.
When you are sitting down it is important you sit up straight with your whole back against the chair and keep your shoulders back, almost like you are trying to crack and egg that is between your shoulder blades.
The best and easiest way to grow taller is by correcting your posture. Some of these tips are going to be uncomfortable when you first start applying them, but if you can go a full week with applying these tips they will become a lot easier and you will start to notice week by week you are actually growing taller.