Can Better Posture During Grappling Reduce Pain and Injuries?

[kawaiiitakko]

Hey everyone,

I’ve noticed that spending long hours in BJJ often leaves me with tight shoulders, neck pain, and lower back soreness. I’ve heard that posture and alignment can make a big difference, but I’m not sure how to apply it while still staying effective on the mat.

Has anyone had success using posture correction exercises, mobility drills, or stretches to relieve pain from grappling?

Which routines helped, and how did you balance maintaining strong defensive positions without compromising long-term joint health?

Any tips, personal experiences, or resources would be appreciated.

 

[kawaiiitakko]

Hey everyone,

I’ve noticed that spending long hours in BJJ often leaves me with tight shoulders, neck pain, and lower back soreness. I’ve heard that posture and alignment can make a big difference, but I’m not sure how to apply it while still staying effective on the mat.

Has anyone had success using posture correction exercises, mobility drills, or stretches to relieve pain from grappling?

Which routines helped, and how did you balance maintaining strong defensive positions without compromising long-term joint health?

Any tips, personal experiences to explore Atlas Posture services, or resources would be appreciated.

thanks in advance for any help

 

[wolffanghameha]

Spoiler: Long ass post

Posture is important for helping muscles to not be overused or underused. Human muscles evolved to withstand certain stresses and with bad posture they take on more stress.

Common problems nowadays are excessive anterior pelvic tilt, rounded/internally rotated shoulders, forward head posture. These are more common nowadays because of larger durations of sitting in chairs/couches, looking forward at TVs/computers and looking down at phones.
Do you have some particular postural issues you're aware of? Your routine should be dependent on your weaknesses.

GSP's coach Firas Zahabi is obsessed with a book called Becoming a Supple Leopard and bases a lot of his strength and conditioning coaching around the ideas in that book.

Good posture is a daily thing. It's something you can remind yourself of throughout the day and you get more used to reminding yourself and better posture becomes easier. As good posture is used, the muscles involved become adapted as it's happening, so the posture becomes easier to maintain. So what's difficult at first becomes easier.

Myself I've had issues with shoulder posture before and with upper back/head posture. You could have head posture issues, if your neck hurts. Something that can cause poor head posture is weak/inactive lower traps. Overhead raises for the lower traps (high reps. I use an exercise band. I think higher duration sets can be better for posture, compared to heavy sets) and then really trying to straighten upwards while doing that exercise helps. Also holding a shrug (no weight needed. The shrug is to help the traps to engage, especially if not used to activating the lower traps. However a shrug uses both the upper and lower traps, and the goal is to have the lower traps active without needing so much upper trap involvement), putting my hands on my head and then trying to push the top of my head into my hands. I'll mention that weak lower traps will cause some thoracic (upper spine) rounding and put more pressure on the front ribs/sternum and cause chest muscle tightness (likewise chest tightness can cause poorer thoracic posture by pulling things forwards. Like after lots of chest exercise the tightness could make it more effortful to stand straight).
Another thing I've worked on is foot (the arch) and ankle posture and hip posture, because I had lower leg pain for years. If the alignment of the hip/knee/ankle is off, then more stress is placed on certain structures during activities like standing, walking, pushing off the floor, landing and running. Say it could be more stress on the knee or on the muscles and tendons of the shin. If the glute medius (side glutes) are too weak or inactive, then the hip won't stay strong (it'll sag left/right) and the alignment of the leg will be off. It might not be felt until doing more activity that puts strain on the structures, like running. Some people might get benefit from doing glute med exercises as a warmup, like banded sideways walks, or I've found holding the muay thai leg kick checking position for extended periods of time (30+ seconds), without the hip dropping and with proper ankle alignment and while trying to keep balance, is a good exercise for that stability. Once the muscle is being used correctly, then it's naturally being strengthened just through the movement eg with every step of walking and running.

I mostly try to find out about anatomy to try to figure out how the body is supposed to function and what role different muscles/tendons have and will read stuff on Google Scholar, like summaries of the existing knowledge base (pretty much like reading a chapter of a textbook). I'll search for the pathophysiology of different issues and if I see technical terms I use those in searches to avoid the crap. The free parts of Physiopedia is another resource. Youtube search sucks, but I look for physios/physical therapists on there. Couple I remember are "Bob and Brad" and Eric Wong.

Stretching helps for preventing strains in my experience. Probably because a strain is when a muscle is overstretched so the fibres tear and a more flexible (even temporarily) muscle is harder to tear, because it's further from the end of its ROM. Like if you have an exercise band, it's more likely to break when it's stretched to 3x its resting length than at 2x its resting length. Also tight muscles can pull on other adjacent or antagonistic tissues, causing issues, so stretching can alleviate that.

Some of posture is awareness. So developing knowledge and body awareness of what the correct positions feel like and having ways to tell if it's off. Eg your ear should aligned with your shoulder and if it's further forwards your head is too forwards. Maybe you move to the extreme of bad posture in each direction and then use that to find neutral. Ideally good posture is not so conscious, although initially any corrections will be. When you're asleep and then wake up feeling good or feeling sore because your slept in a bad position, the difference wasn't conscious. If you sit for hours on a couch that has very little firmness, you'll have to make a big effort to keep good posture. If it's firm it takes less effort and is natural.

In terms of combat sports, I don't know what you mean by strong defensive positions, but I feel like non-ideal postures will occur, but it should occur because you're forced into it, rather than it being an unforced postural error. But also a human body that's been less stressed by postural issues throughout the day will have more capacity to deal with additional strain in training and good posture will keep more of the strain on the parts of the body that are built for it.

 

[rmongler]

Can Better Posture During Grappling Reduce Pain and Injuries?​

Yes, absolutely. A straight or slightly dorsiflexed spinal posture from neck to hip is a solid platform for strength. Bends or twists in the spine bring squishy weakness.