As a British male, you may well spend several decades of your life in an office chair, servicing your mortgage. Eventually, the straight-backed, open-chested posture of our youth degrades into the hunch-backed slouch of an indentured serf. Poor posture – which affects more than 80 per cent of us, apparently – can lead to various health problems. Unfortunately, round shoulders and a slump also make you look like a shorter-than-you-are, fatter-than-you-are loser.

Thanks to a bout of round-shouldered googling from my office chair, I have found an interesting alternative that demands no willpower at all. Invented by Equifit, an American equestrian equipment company, the Shoulders Back (£36.55; www.shoulders-back.com) is a brace designed to give riders the posture that gymkhana judges demand. There’s not much to it: just a panel of material that fits over your shoulders at the back, tightened with Lycra straps at the front.

Wearing it feels like you’ve slipped on an unforgivingly tailored jacket: your shoulder blades are pushed together and your chest juts forward. From the front, those straps resemble a shoulder holster – bring on the CSI fantasies – but from behind, I’m told, the Shoulders Back looks like a nursing bra. So you definitely have to wear it under clothes.

After wearing it for an hour a day for a week, the Shoulders Back has worked pretty well. My back is straighter, plus I feel less like a dull-eyed mortgage slave and more like a master of the universe. In a truss.

tokenmale@thetimes.co.uk