Still single? Check your posture
^ 4.2/5 for clickbait
It is unlikely that posture is the sole reason you’re having a tough time getting a girl or guy’s number. That being said, it can play a pivotal role in how you’re perceived through both your appearance, and your voice. Improving your posture has the added benefit of decreasing your likelihood of experiencing back or neck pain, but we’re here for vanity.
Appearance
Doesn’t take an expert to explain the effects posture has on your appearance in a room: the smaller you make yourself the more feeble and anxious you look, the bigger you make yourself the more imposing and confident you come off.
Before you start puffing your chest around your local pub like a Russian bookie, there are some nuances to good posture that require some explaining. Obviously a forward head and a slouched back are both not a good look and chronically bad for you, but being overextended, as in puffing your chest out, can be just as unattractive and incidentally harmful to long-term spine health.
What does overextended mean? If I can see the bottom of your rib cage through your shirt you’re doing too much, you look like a primate trying to fend off a troop of rivals. In the simplest of terms, your collarbone should be up, ribs should be down, and shoulders should be down, back, and relaxed. Or, just imagine you’re being hung from the ceiling by the crown of your head.
That posture, aside from being biomechanically ideal, exudes a confident yet relaxed aura that can be felt and seen from the moment you lock eyes with someone till the moment you trip over your words.
Voice
This one is more subtle, and indirect, but anyone with a performing arts background probably understands this right away. First, let’s discuss why your voice matters when you’re ~tryna wheel~.
Ever heard someone with a nasally or high pitched voice, or both and thought, “wow, wish I could record that and save it for later”? Didn’t think so. Meanwhile, Morgan Freeman is landing GPS gigs with Waze for his one-of-a-kind, deep and reassuring baritone.
Tons of communications research illustrates the effect these deep voices have on listeners, and what they show is deeper, slower voices are more trustworthy and attractive. Now we can’t really make your true voice deeper, and there’s no need, as the issue for many of us is we’re stuck talking from our mouths (as those in the biz call it), a more nasally and higher pitched version of our true voice, and have trouble projecting from our chest (diaphragm + core), our true, deeper, more attractive voice.
Don’t believe me or can’t follow? Try sitting up right and bellowing a note from your gut, and as you hold the note just push your chin as far forward as you can - slowly. See how just that subtle movement makes you sound like a loony toons character? Imagine hearing that from across a high top squealing “what’s your instagram handle” 3 times, fighting to make an impression at sunday brunch. Back to Hinge it is.
**Correcting posture will set the foundation for finding your inner James Earl Jones, helping you come off more credible as you embellish your job title, but alone may not be enough. It is the prerequisite to your true voice and learning proper exhalation from your gut comes next. (article on that later)**
Wrapping it up:
Everyone notices your posture, and they don’t even know it. If you need any evidence, pick a model or celeb you think is attractive and then google candid paparazzi photos of them. If you can’t find one of them slouched like a bridge troll, there’s a reason for it, and if you can, you’ll see what I mean.
Remember the cues: collar bone up, ribs down, shoulders are down, back, and relaxed. Or, think about being pulled up from the crown of your head by a rope from the ceiling. You’ll be wheeling in no time.
Questions? Send an email to ideen@vicesfitness.com
