Back pain when sitting is not caused by bad posture but by not changing position often enough. Modern research (such as the RESTORE trial) shows that there is no single “correct” sitting position. Your back is a strong and resilient structure that is made to move. When your back starts to hurt while sitting, it is often an overactive protective reaction of the nervous system to a static position. The solution is not a rigid posture but trust in your body’s ability to change position and move freely.

Forget “good posture” – go for the next position

A common misconception is that we should sit bolt upright and “keep it all together”. This often leads to unnecessary tension in the back muscles and to increased sensitivity to pain.

The best sitting position is always the next one. Your back loves movement: lean back, slouch now and then, stand up or sit on the edge of your chair for a while. The most important thing is to let go of the fear and tension around moving.

Pain when sitting 😔 Back pain when sitting can be the result of sitting too upright. So is it worth keeping your back straight after all? My short answer: no, at least not for very long at a time.

My first memories of posture take me back to my childhood somewhere in the 1970s, when at school we sat with our backs pressed against the chair and our hands on the desk. Was this the “good posture” we all learned at school?

The words “good posture” bring a couple of questions to mind. First of all, what is “posture”? The Finnish Wikipedia describes it roughly like this: “Posture means the shape of the human skeleton in different positions from the feet to the shoulders. Correct posture, especially the position of the spine, is important for the wellbeing of the back. In good posture the weight and pressure of the body are distributed correctly on the structures of the back.”

“Sitting with a straight back means that your back muscles have to hold this position for up to 8 hours a day.”

So what is “bad or wrong posture”? Sitting away from the backrest with your head bent and your belly relaxed and sticking out? So sitting in this “slumped” position is wrong – what?!

Where did all this actually start, and who defined posture as good or bad? We would have to go far back in history (we won’t in this article), to a time when sitting in a slumped position was a sign of laziness or indifference.

On the other hand, “good posture” has always been seen as more attractive than slouching. But what if your back doesn’t like sitting upright? There’s no point in gritting your teeth in one position all day 😉

Pilates, which spread explosively in the 1980s, is based on the proud posture developed by Joseph Pilates. Pulling in your navel and consciously breathing with your diaphragm are its key elements.

When you breathe in normally, the diaphragm moves down a few centimetres. As it contracts, it draws air into the lungs and pushes the abdominal organs down at the same time. The chest expands and the belly moves outwards.

What happens to the diaphragm if you pull in your navel while you breathe in? It may be that the free and normal contraction and downward movement of the diaphragm becomes harder. So can “good posture” make breathing harder? A good question worth thinking about.

Core training and planks don’t seem to work for back pain

Alongside Pilates came “core training”, which aims to strengthen the deep muscles that support the back. The idea was to prevent back pain or reduce it. Over the last 20 years core training has become popular all over the world, even though the research results on its effect on back pain in long-term follow-up are rather poor.

For years core training has been handed out on a conveyor belt as a “general treatment” for back pain, because weak deep muscles have been suspected as the cause. For some strange reason the back has come to be seen as a particularly weak structure. This is an unfortunate belief that can make back pain worse.

The natural rounding of the back when you bend forward is completely normal movement of the spine. So why should you avoid it?

As a result, at my clinic I meet more and more people who have pain when sitting and who seem stiffer than ever. On top of core training, people have started to hold their back and midsection tight without noticing it.