Does Touching Your Toes Increase Height?

Touching your toes exercises is, in my opinion, a great way to express the flexibility of your hamstrings and lower back.

But, reading more about this exercise on the internet, I saw several articles claiming that standing and seated touch your toes exercise will increase your height.

Is it true? Does touching your toes increase height?

Exercising standing or seated touch your toes will not help you increase your height. Even though it sounds tempting, no research supports height increases from stretching exercises. Your genetics determine your body height.

Additional factors such as nutrition, exercise and sleep are crucial in your childhood to help your body produce growth hormone (GH).

Instead of focusing on touching your toes exercise to increase height, you should improve your body posture. That can make you stand taller, especially if you have an emphasized rounded shoulder posture.

Let’s see how you can achieve a taller look with exercises.

Why People Believe Touching Toes Make Them Taller

People see exercise touching their toes as a way to elongate their spine and achieve permanent height gain. Someone even suggests you need 45 minutes of daily stretching to produce HGH (human growth hormone) and to see height gains.

Another reason for believing that this stretching exercise will make people taller is to decompress spine structures and gain a few centimeters increase in body height.

One of the most common opinions regarding stretching exercises and height gain is that stretching exercises will slim your muscles and make you look taller.

All the above reasons are wrong. Touching your toes is an exercise for the flexibility of the leg and back muscles, and it cannot help you increase your height.

Exercise and physical activity are crucial to developing your body, but genetics is the main factor determining your body height.

How Your Posture Affects Your Height

Your body posture is how you hold your body while standing or sitting. That refers to your whole body, from your head to your feet. To use the maximum potential of your body height, you must have a good body posture.

By good body posture, I mean mainly how you hold your back, neck and head. Additionally, you should take a closer look at your pelvic posture also. Let me explain in more detail.

Poor upper body posture such as rounded shoulders, forward head posture and thoracic kyphosis directly affect the reduction of your body height because they prevent you from keeping your body completely upright while standing or sitting.

That’s why it’s crucial to work on your posture if you want to stand taller. In this way, you can increase your body height because your body will be more upright when you stand or sit.

Also, anterior pelvic tilt posture with tight hip flexors can lead to a slight bending of the upper body and thus diminish your potential body height.

I hope you have a clearer picture of how your posture affects your body height.

Touching your toes exercises are not a key for correcting these poor posture patterns or increasing body height. The true answer lies in improving your posture.

How To Stand Taller With Posture Exercises

Here are some tips to help you improve your body height when standing:

• Tuck in your chin (prevents forward head posture and increased cervical lordosis)
• Pull your shoulders backward (avoid lifting the shoulders up)
• Gently push forward with your chest
• Hold your belly in
• Slightly push your pelvis forward
• Extend your knees
• Hold your body weight on the outer part of your feet (avoid overpronation)

That is too much to think of when you’re standing. I agree. But I wanted to show you how your posture affects your body height.

You can start by performing just a few of these tips and see how it feels.

If you focus on only one movement (chin tucks in for example), you can start doing a repetition of that and you have a nice posture exercise for combating forward head posture. Apply the same to other body parts and you have a complete training program for improving your posture and body height.

Isn’t that great?

Summary

If you’re capable of touching your toes, that’s great. But don’t expect to improve your body height by practicing this stretching challenge. Your body height is mostly determined by genetics. Physical activity, nutrition and sleep are the most important things that help your body grow, not a single stretching exercise. What you can do to improve your body height is to improve your posture. That way you will stand taller and look more confident.

Learn more about stretching by reading the books on stretching and flexibility and by using a stretching exercise equipment for home use.