Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/posturepals/comments/1bshpnj/is_my_posture_bad/
Hi there.
When you ask "Is my posture good or bad?" you are missing to mention what are the critera being used to make the judgement. For anybody to answer this, they will need to supply their own criteria. And there are many possible. So one needs to be precise.
I work with people regarding their postures, and we have one such criteria. For us, "good posture" is: correctly functioning mechanism of a man. "bad posture" is then incorrectly functioning mechanism of a man.
Because this criteria works for me, I will judge your posture according to them.
In your case, you have "bad posture" that is your mechanism isn't functioning as it should be.
You have (like most people these days) a 101 example of shortening of your torso, and it's the main source of your problems.
On the image you see two curves. The one at the back is your spine. The one at the front outlines the front contour of your body. You can see they define a shape of the torso. The arrows indicate that you are moving your lower torso (pelvis) backwards, same as your upper torso (ribcage) and you are also pushing the middle torso forwards.
What actually happens is that you rotate your pelvis forward and down at it's top (blue arrow) and you rotate the top of your ribcage backwards and the bottom of the ribcage forwards (yellow arrow). These two opposing rotations of the ribcage from above and pelvis from below create forces that shape your lowerback spine into this shape of arch.
This means you are shortening your torso. Constricting breathing, circulation, digestion. You are overloading some muscles and completely ignoring others (unknowingly). Your joints are not bearing the weight as they should. It's not good.
There are many other issues, but I didn't marked them out. I would need better images for that. But it's the placement of your feet, your ankles and knees are released, arms retracted too far back. Same with your head.
It's all very fixable.