Posture assessment: TheJustNez

Assessment context and image originals from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdvancedPosture/comments/15y20rl/posture_assessment_please_and_tips/

Posture assessment

Righto, so here is the requested assessment. It took me a while to wrap my head around it. Your pattern is different to other people (or I'm missing something), but I think I figured it out. 

Before we start - the green plumblines are dead vertical (and horizontal on the anterior view). 

The basics issues are pretty standard and nicely visible on the sagittal view - let's get through those first. 

You have a consistent postural habit of placing your left foot in front of the right - clearly visible on all images (except the posterior view, where the plant is in the way). This is where the left / right imbalances start, but will get to that later. 

Ankles and knees released (not in full extension). 

You have a slight APT and are shifting your pelvis too far forward. To model that up, I have placed a blue square there. If we use the left side view, we could label that rotation as "counter clockwise". 

The rotation of your ribcage (yellow rectangle) is in the opposite direction (clockwise) and is easily visible by the slope of your sternum (which is the front of the ribcage),  leaning back at the top. 

Let's call your pelvis "lower torso", your ribcage "upper torso", and your spine (and guts) in the middle the "middle torso". When you rotate your lower torso anticlockwise, and your upper torso clockwise at the same time, it will shape the highly articulated spine inbetween into the arch shown as a red curve. You are effectively shortening (and narrowing)  your torso. Ideally, you would have the red curve straight. 

You are retracting your arms too much backwards. The same goes for your head. If you would do the "broomstick test" (brown line),  where you place a broomstick in such a way that it touches your sacrum and it touches between your  shoulderblades, you can clearly see the arching in the lowerback and you can also see the back of your head (your ponytail root) touching the broom stick. Again, ideally, you would have the back of your head 4 inches (or so) away from the stick. 

On the right side view, I have placed blue markers - Ankles, Knees, Iliacs (anterior superior iliac spine), bottom and top sternum. Ideally, we would want all of them on the green plumb line (which is always set to the Ankle point). 

Now, the interesting part is the front and back views, where left / right imbalances show up.  TBH, I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. It looks different to other people I have worked with before. On the images, it looks like you don't have any "twists", which is weird, as there have to be twists. Instead, what it looks like to me is that you are "shearing" yourself by pulling the left shoulder further to the left and up. 

You can see your upper torso "tilted" that way (to the left at the top - look at the yellow cross), and you can also see it on the plumblines set to the side of your hips, where you are clearly shifted to the left (upper torso relative to the lower torso). Interestingly enough, the shoulder height is the same (which didn't make any sense, until I figured out the following): 

If you compare the position of your arms in relation to your upper  torso, it's obvious that you are retracting your right arm further back than your left. But, normally, when you retract one arm more than the other, the shoulder that is retracted more must be higher. And yours is not. Then it struck me. You are collapsing the distance between your right iliac and the bottom of your right ribcage, which will shorten you on the right side, but because of the right hand retraction, you are compensating for this collapse with the shoulder lifted higher up, hence, both shoulders "appear" to be pretty much the same height. 

Saying that, i still think there is something that I'm missing. Most likely some "twist" (horizontal rotation), probably in your pelvis. Another mystery to me is that for how much you retract your arms back, your shoulder blade crests are almost invisible on the posterior view. Which is weird - I'd expect them to be more visible. 

So yes, I reckon I'm missing something, but given that it's near midnight here and I've been eyeballing your images for over 2 hours, I don't think I'll figure it out today. But, I'll most likely get back to it (as it won't let me sleep until I crack this riddle), and if (when) I figure it out, I'll let you know. 

If you have any questions, or if any of the above doesn't make sense, just sing out. 

Cheers.