Does strength or other training correct 'bad posture'?

[oarfish]

So, the same discussion that lead to this question involved another argument that centered around supposed muscle imbalance between e.g. chest and back musculature that would cause a permanent non-volitional rounding of the back during desk work for instance. Hence my questions:

• Is there any accepted definition of good or bad posture?
• Are any particular ways of positioning the body in space for longer periods of time associated with structural changes in muscles and pain, injury or other bad health outcomes?
• Does strength training serve to "correct" imbalances between muscle groups that would lead to any improvements of health outcomes or sports performance?
• For sports that involve some muscle groups to a predominant degree, does training opposing muscle groups correlate with any improvement in performance or injury risk? e.g. I'm told that climbers, who use their back musculature more than e.g. their chest, train "opposite" muscle groups specifically to reduce injury risk (or some other reason I did not catch)

My feeling was that a lot of these claims are oft-perpetuated myths, but would like some data or professional opinions.

[Austin Baraki]

[*]Is there any accepted definition of good or bad posture?

No.

[*]Are any particular ways of positioning the body in space for longer periods of time associated with structural changes in muscles and pain, injury or other bad health outcomes?

Sustained body positions can be associated with various symptoms, including pain, paresthesias/numbness, or other discomfort. Movement is generally helpful to mitigate this.

[*]Does strength training serve to "correct" imbalances between muscle groups that would lead to any improvements of health outcomes or sports performance?

You would first need a generalizable definition of what is "correct" muscle balance (in this case, such that a deviation from this "correct" value reliably leads to impaired health or performance). Generally speaking, this does not exist, but you may find some concepts in this article useful: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog...-after-injury/

[*]For sports that involve some muscle groups to a predominant degree, does training opposing muscle groups correlate with any improvement in performance or injury risk? e.g. I'm told that climbers, who use their back musculature more than e.g. their chest, train "opposite" muscle groups specifically to reduce injury risk (or some other reason I did not catch)

I am not aware of evidence to support this. I would still recommend climbers train their entire body regardless, although would not use this rationale to support it.