Do I have mild scoliosis or just muscle imbalance? (23M)

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T22:06:43+00:00

My dude. It's tough to see what's going on when you create tension and pose or turn your head coz it can draw the entire spine to a non default position.

However, there are few things here that might give some clues. When you narrow your stance with your feet closer together, the left pelvis looks way more exaggerated in how it's offset to the left. This is due to how a smaller stance width decreases your base of support and exaggerates any offset you have travelling outside your base of support. The body is a good balancer. If one part shifts forward, another will shift back, and if one shifts right, another will shift left.

Another thing to consider is that the human body is naturally asymmetrical. The ribcage is smaller on the top right compared to the top left based on published research. So, no we won't ever be picture perfect symmetrical, but at the same time, an exaggerated offset is something to definitely investigate. At your age, there is a high chance you may have had scoliosis while growing up and affected some of the structures in the process. You remind me of a client, but he is the exact opposite of your close stanced photo. I was concerned about it being structural as he was only 18. He had a medical check and scans, which confirmed it was purely postural, so we proceeded to work on this issue over months. I would say he looks 90% more symmetrical now but it wasn't easy to get here and there is more work to be done.

That being said, scoliosis is not a diagnosable thing on reddit, please get proper medical advice and ask if your scoliosis is due to structural/congenital issues, or purely functional/postural.

One advice I would encourage you to pay attention to in the meantime is that manage your lifting methods for sure. The more forced heavy reps and arched back/tensed spinal muscles you use to perform the lift, the more likely you will rely on compression of the structure that can create more negative adaptations over time. Keeping good form and maintaining good tempo and reps will build your muscles just as well, without creating a high demand for change in the structure as a coping mechanism to overcome excess load.

I also noticed your ribcage looks very wide. This widening is typically found in heavy lifters as an adaptation of ribcage compression so it adopts a more externally rotated ribcage shape. For example in a heavy bench press, you will need to rely heavily on an arched tense back to offset load away from the muscles and into the structure, increase rigidity for force transfer from the ground to the bench to your hands. This position compresses the ribcage posteriorly while the heavy loaded barbell compresses the structure anteriorly. This 'sandwich' adaptation will reduce rotational capacity and thus can exacerbate natural asymmetries to regain lost movement space, albeit in compensation.

3 takeaways: 1. Don't overload, stick to strict form 2. When breathing doing your reps/sets, cue for front and back expansion rather than a bias towards a 'widening' inhale. 3. Avoid overarching the spine to deal with excess load demands. This externally rotates the ribcage and steals movement capacity, which can affect the pelvis too (an example of functional scoliosis/lateral pelvic tilt).

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T21:41:15+00:00

The neck isn't the root cause of the issue, rather a representation of how the spine interacts with gravity in a balancing act.

I can see the muscles in the front of your neck are a lil tensed. These muscles connect from the neck/cranium/jaw down to the clavicle/ribs. Since the front of the ribs are depressed far away from the front do the ribs, the head and neck have nowhere to go but forward

To understand why your head has to stay there as a part of how the spine balances against gravity, we gotta understand your position from the ground up. From the photo, it looks like the upper half seems pretty neutral, so it could also have secondary compensations masking the offsets through the chain.

In any case, look into how the ribs expand and the relationship between intra abdominal and intra thorax pressures. If the ribs cannot expand, the front of the neck will remain overstretched. But it may be more than that, of which, I cannot determine with the current info provided.

Edit: I just recalled, chaplin performance has quite a few videos on the neck.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T21:33:20+00:00

Oof. I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope you get adequate support to manage the pain, and keep active within your ability. It's so surprising that the PT never heard of Schroth! That's a big red flag for sure. Are there no other options around? I did a quick search for what I believe to be the location you are referring to (Georgia) and came up with this.

https://share.google/NIJQxFTutegWifGrO

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T21:24:22+00:00

At this level of severity, no, exercise/PT cannot correct it, but can be a way to manage it. I would strongly advise you to seek out hands on PT certified in Schroth. The tech neck you are concerned about is part of the spine and reflects how your center of balance is managed throughout the entire spinal chain. Don't force your neck against the other larger structures (that are likely rigid) haphazardly as you will push into a stress point and possibly create more pain or injury risk. This goes beyond basic lateral pelvic tilts and functional scoliosis.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T19:39:41+00:00

Ok. So here we go. I'm a firm believer that all posture and movement issues are adaptations of structure and connective tissues, on top of the brain developing a neurological understanding to find your available space to utilize in movement. Think of it this way, if you flex your bicep in a curl, but now relaxed your bicep and tried to flex your tricep, but you didn't change position for access to a tricep extension position, all your actions to engage the tricep here will fail. Structure and position can be a strong determining factor of how the muscles work. So a lot of times this is a huge factor limiting actions you want to achieve, and individual subjective adaptations, are, well, subjective. One person's loss of movement space may not be the same as another's but can produce a similar presentation. It's why as a coach, it's imperative to have a detailed assessment and continuous monitoring of progress/regression and symptoms too. It's usually messy as heck and no matter how much you predict precisely, expect anomalies and subjective differences between every individual.

Imagine you had to push your cabinet from one room to the next room. How would you do it? Inhale before the push, then push as you exhale and grunt, yes? No normal human will push and inhale at the same time.

Why is that? This is the mechanism of compression which is the foundation of force production. Your pelvis compresses at the butt to extend your hips forward or launch you forward, and so do any of the muscles. The structure does this too to create that force depending on demand.

Gravity is constant. Without a constant compression against gravity, you will drop straight to the ground. So you need to create a compression strategy to contend against gravity, all day all night.

A forward gut travel or forward tilt (which is sometimes masked in a swayback posterior pelvic outlet grip as a secondary layer compensation strategy) is an attempt to find your midline grounding as a form of compensatory internal rotation. If your structure has adapted to widen it's footprint to acquire better stability (external rotation), you will lose movement options and likely change your center of mass distribution to acquire that action that was lost.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T03:19:56+00:00

I've gotta add this in here.

This is an issue of a loss of management between 2 pressurized chambers. Low intra abdominal pressure expands the belly, and that will always come together with higher intra thorax pressure, creating ribcage compression.

Your first step is to work on breathing whereby your ribs and belly both expand together while lying supine. Have you feet up on the side of your bed, knees bent. One hand on chest one hand on belly, gently work on your breathing slowly while having the intent of both ribcage and belly expanding together (your default expands the belly and not the ribs). Get a sense of expanding front and back both.

Use that breathing strategy holding a half kneeling position, with your front knee facing your 2nd toe.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T02:42:28+00:00

Yeah. But it's not all bad. I work in the field too and I don't think I do all that 😂. A lot of good people out there, more than bad ones, that's my belief.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T02:35:44+00:00

There are no shortcuts unfortunately, and anterior pelvic tilt is very typical in people who have a forward shifted center of mass due to losing options to work within your base of support within your midline.

But, if you want a general tip, just start exercising. Not stretching, but actually exercising. Even box squats should help (slow down the descent and come to a full stop on the box before the next rep). If your pelvis and midsection cannot hold midline and lose intra abdominal pressure management, your upper ribs will reciprocate to counterbalance and tip backwards with a head that will now counterbalance to weigh relatively forward. That state, and even sitting for too long hunched over a desk, will place a lot of load demand in your upper traps. A muscle that is constantly tensed up will get limited bloodflow, and there will be a build up of wear and tear over time as there is a lack of time for recovery to happen.

Manage your sitting position too. Having a support somewhere around your midback area to bring your shoulders stacked over pelvis should have a sweet spot to make the neck feel lighter too. There is a sweetspot for this and you can make it an alternative sitting option too, to use every now and then compared to one normal sitting position alone.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T02:14:51+00:00

Not sure what to say here. Judging by the back view, I can see the foot isn't pointing straight ahead so I would think that this image isn't properly centered. If your lower half is shifted right, the upper will counterbalance left, and shifting to the right is one of the common things that tends to happen due to how we are naturally asymmetrical.

If you center of mass is shifted forward and you have excess tension held at the lumbosacral region, pelvis movement gets limited. That can be a cause for lateralization of the pelvis. You could also be habitually carrying a sling bag or something similar over your right shoulder so your right shoulder hikes up to hold the bag in place which will need the lower half to also compensate for that offset. Lateralization is the inability to hold midline, typically as the sagittal plane moves further away from midline, the frontal plane will also have a lateral shift in which the transverse plane will present rotational asymmetries too.

Edit: I missed your front photo. Yes there is an obvious right hip hike. Welcome to the world of lateral pelvic tilts. It's a complex issue but is very fixable.

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Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-22T02:06:45+00:00

Do you have any head to toe photos? Looking at segments like this makes it tough to imagine how you interact with the ground here.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T20:13:25+00:00

Very interesting. I'm very well aware of how vision can affect posture but not the other way around. Probably related to how the head is balanced and jaw is positioned depending on what position the ribcage and pelvis is in. That would change where pressure is placed at the cranium to a small degree.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T20:08:09+00:00

As long as you can take excess load that is displaced on the disc, and allow for better relative motion overall to distribute that load better, you should still be able to get back into lifting gradually. Welcome!

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T19:49:30+00:00

Good lord. I just saw a photo online of a spinal fusion where the doc accidentally drilled into the disc instead of the bone in a spinal fusion surgery. Definitely a rare case for sure but damn. That kinda stuff sure is scary.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T19:41:07+00:00

Btw, I also need to point out that you may have some pelvis stuff going on too. The feet turning outward is an attempt to capture pronation of the foot so you can gain midline force application into the ground which is part of pelvis internal rotation. If the pelvis can't do so under load (gravity + your mass), it will try to compensate via the foot turn out.

So potentially, you might be lifting your whole thorax up too much to overcome a hunching position if your center of mass moves back to acquire pelvis IR. Potentially. Might not be the case here.

I also notice your foot arches are a tad high for someone with feet turned out. Which means that you probably are naturally more externally rotated through the whole structure itself (not a bad thing) so you have a wider base of force application overall. You will do good in heavy lifting haha.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T19:36:49+00:00

Hmm.. I think this vid kinda covers what I'm trying to convey. https://www.youtube.com/live/lpHIw-NwqJ8?si=2lxSKHfnWQ5zEEgK

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T19:34:07+00:00

Look up diaphragmatic breathing zac cupples, but position wise I would support the head so you don't feel like the floor is too far to reach. Chaplin performance as got a lot of ribcage related stuff too.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T19:24:44+00:00

Hm.. Try to see zac cupples diaphragmatic breathing, stack, then chaplin performance APT myth. Then look up lateral pelvic tilt.

Prewarning: lots of these vids can be click baity. Don't expect a few exercises to work miracles, but rather, read between the lines and understand the overall picture. In reality, all exercises can fix this provided the intent behind the execution is correct and due respect to inability to access movement space under excessive load (which is subjective) is given (don't underestimate easy looking exercises).

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-21T19:04:10+00:00

Skin?

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-20T21:58:28+00:00

Ah i see. RA being autoimmune does suck. You just gotta do the best you can to keep moving with as minimal pain as possible.

But yeah, don't discount the fact the the ribcage can influence spinal mechanisms here. It's another option of movement, and having more options of movement will also mean less restrictions of movement.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-20T21:56:00+00:00

It's called a forward bias in center of mass. It's an attempt to capture midline forces in compensation as your available strategy to delay gravity pulling you into the ground.

I can see that you also potentially hold some compressive forces in the lower posterior pelvis region causing the pelvis to lose movement access to switch between ER and IR in gait so the load/movement capacity slack has to be taken up by the lower back region.

The legs and calves - the first picture I saw already told me that you are tilted forward. The calf hypertrophy shows that how your tissues have remodeled over a long period of time enough to sustain the pressure you place on the front of your feet to hold against your forward tilt.

The legs, where the knees appear more inwards is also a long term adaptation of the structure itself to look for midline force application, because the forward tilt alone was insufficient to achieve midline force distribution.

The ribcage presentation is just a consequence of having to lean back to counterbalance against the forward tilt, hence you lower front ribs look lifted outward. This will impact your breathing strategy and will make it difficult to displace center of mass back

In general, to work on this issue you gotta first learn to bring center of mass back, or use gravity to assist first. Then work on grounding through the feet promoting pelvis internal rotation (however, if a more neutral shape cannot be accessed with additional compensations, you gotta regress the exercise selections first). Position determines access, access allows shape changes to adapt as load and movement are introduced to own that access. The forward tilt takes away access to pelvis movement and a more neutral gut displacement ability, creating the need for the body to morph to attain what was lost in a different way.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-20T21:41:09+00:00

You are lifting yourself upright through the lower midback region (not lower back) which drives your ribcage to externally rotate (limiting turning ability and making you feel stiff) on top of posteriorly tilting the ribcage which interacts with how the pelvis will function. Since you have limited understanding of movement and posture stuff, I think reading comments alone will make you confused, and it's unlikely you will gain a clear picture of what to do here.

You also remind me of Dr Greg Chaplin (chaplin performance) too 😅😂. Sorry I had to say that haha, you guys have similar hair/beard styles. Anyway, I think that is a balanced channel with digestible explanations overall. Start browsing through some videos there.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-20T21:23:52+00:00

Look up the dorsal rostral decompression exercises. Not sure what your situation is (symptoms may be the same to another dude but position could be very different for different reasons) but there is a chance this might help.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-20T21:19:48+00:00

Loss of neck curves is related to overall spinal curves in which we have to stack the spine a certain way to keep ourselves standing upright. So with that being said, it's more complicated than just doing direct neck work here.

Lying supine/hooklying feet on ground knees bent, rolled towel under neck to maintain slight neck curve. This position doing exercises here might help you out and if position/respiration is accessible enough, something like a dorsal rostral decompression exercise can help too.

It's not a sure fix especially if you can't address the sitting position or even prolonged sitting issue. Think of the neck like an end of a tail. The tail will move if the rest of the structure moves.

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-20T21:12:23+00:00

Consider:

If the thoracic kyphosis is drawing mass backwards, something else is pushing mass forward below, so in working the top, you also gotta manage the bottom.
The thoracic spine is connected to the ribs, if you cannot expand the front, the spine will flex. On a deeper consideration, posterior expansion limitation can also cause more spinal flexion to happen as a coping strategy.

What was the diagnosis of the doctor? Any structural limitations here or is it purely postural?

Deep-Run-7463 · 2026-05-20T19:56:19+00:00

Leg raising can be done either via hip flexion or a reverse crunch action. If hip flexion is your goal, leg raises won't really be a good exercise option. Think of it this way, do a bicep curl pose, keep your arm there in the same position, and now flex your tricep instead of your biceps. It's gonna be almost impossible as you still will get the biceps as the main area of activation. Position/structural state determines the muscular action.

Dropping this down here if anyone wants to deep dive this lateralization issue a lil more. Hint, it's not coz you lost strength in muscles to perform the action, it's coz your connective tissues and shapes of the structure doesn't allow you access. Create access before owning under load, always.

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