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Comment by Fifer82 | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone at HN have pain from their job? Sitting? Even with expensive chairs, and standing desks?

I have been running 5-7km twice per week since May and I loved how it made me feel, but then comes the pain... lower back... hip flexors... hamstring tightness... Not from my runs but from my job.

This just really drags me down. I have been off the runs for 2 weeks as my hip hurts mid way through my run and this leads to breaking my new found enjoyment and after a few weeks, I will be lazy as I break my routine.

The only thing that would help would be a seat that is like sitting inside a cylinder that rotates from 0-45 degrees on a second by second basis throughout the working day so that no part of the body is strained.

Desks and computers don't work for me and I really worry about a day where I cannot stand due to pain or sit due to pain which naturally effects my output.

I am 38 and feel like no one else is suffering these problems.

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This was me. Tons of issues as soon as I got into running, leading to a multi-year hiatus before I would end up repeating the process.

I decided to break the habit. I did yoga daily for the last year 20-30 min to stretch and strengthen muscles that were weak, using primarily Yoga with Adrienne or Sara Beth Yoga on YouTube. Then I started running slowly - as in following the MAF180 protocol and going real slow while keeping my heart rate in the aerobic zone.

Result? I am now doing 40-50km per week with no pain, and I’ve done three half marathons and working to a marathon in the spring.

I am convinced most people have issues because they have muscle imbalances (yoga helps) and they go out at too fast of a pace.

This is great to hear, that currently is me in various forms - start doing squats in the gym and my knees hurt, play a lot of tennis and something else hurts, etc. I really enjoy the few 10 minute yoga videos I've tried so it's great to hear that something I actually enjoy could be the trick to getting me exercise-ready.

Can I ask you two questions from the other side of this?

- I've spent quite a while searching through yoga videos on YouTube without being able to figure out what a good progression from easy to difficult might look like. Mind sharing some of the ones you found worked the best for you on a regular basis?

- I noticed a lot of yoga videos involve rounding your back eg in toe touching movements. This really put me off because from everything I've read (a lot of Stuart McGill), movements that take your spine out of neutral position and put load on it are bad for the long term health of your back. Did the yoga you practiced involve these movements? Did you notice any ill effects on your back health?

Not the person you're asking, also not an expert, just someone who enjoys lifting weights (Olympic style!) and has spent a lot of time around people whose livelihood revolves around fitness and strength sports.

Rounding your back is only an issue when loaded. You don't wanna round it when squatting or deadlifting (but the Barbell Medicine folks will tell you it's not that big of deal, most of the time). If you're just moving your body on its own, you should absolutely do things that involve rounding your back, like touching your toes. If your back wasn't meant to move that way, it probably wouldn't move that way... or at the very least your body would immediately give you warning signs to make you stop doing that (like when you try to bend a joint the wrong way).

I was doing some beginner gymnastics strength exercises. I saw an advanced video I and couldn't believe what I was seeing.

These advanced gymnasts stood on a box, bent down with straight legs touching their toes, grabbed onto barbell with light weights, keeping their legs straight, slowly stood up keeping the barbell close to their body.

The explanation was the back is designed to do that and if you don't it you lose the ability.

That's not something I would ever attempt, but goes to show if you know what you're doing and have the necessary foundation in strength and flexibility, round back is not only OK but necessary to keep range of motion and strength. Again, I would never attempt that myself.

Thanks for commenting! I hear what you're saying, but I think it's perfectly possible to injure your back with bodyweight exercises over time. Even if we're just talking about yoga, there's a good amount of evidence that incorrectly practiced yoga can and does cause back injuries over time.

Now I'm sure that the optimal answer to that would be to make sure you correctly practice yoga. But the back is probably the worst joint I can think of injuring, and at the same time I'm basically just watching youtube videos and copying them - which isn't really a guarantee of correct practice. So I try to err on the side of caution by keeping my spine neutral :)

I think as you do more yoga you realize that the same “easy” poses are starting points that can be deepened and, when you are ready, added to via variations. Either of the yogis I mentioned in my previous post point out variations. I am surprised how poses I thought I had become advanced at in the beginning were actually just surface level as I developed better interoception and realized the way different body parts and focus could be stretched. It is hard to explain. Just do yoga and over time you’ll know exactly what I am referring to.

Re rounding your back - this is an example of what I am talking about above. If you are rounding your back as you touch your toes, this is an example of not focusing on the right thing. You should be hinging at the hips, not the lower back. If you can’t touch the floor without rounding your back, then either don’t touch the floor or bend your knees enough to let you touch the floor (each of these options focuses on stretching different things).

Good luck & Namaste!

Thanks for the tips, much appreciated :)

I've had lower-back pain during three different times of maximum stress in my lifetime. Meditation helped me handle it when it was happening. It works because most lower-back pain is due to subconsciously tensing the muscles all the time [0]. My technique is to quiet my mind, focus on the muscles, and then consciously relax them.

Each time, my lower-back pain permanently went away when I changed my life situation.

My guess is that you hate some aspect of your job, probably your boss, but the idea is suppressed. Try to find out how you really feel and then you'll know what action is right for you. A therapist can assist you in this.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0446392308/

I suggest floor sitting, a lap desk, and whatever screen mounting solution works for you.

The trick of floor sitting is that you can make drastic postural shifts throughout the day. It's a natural way to get in a stretch. So it's the better way to sit if you find yourself squirming and uncomfortable. All you need to do desk work on the floor is a way to put the screen at a comfortable height, and a lap desk - a large one with padding will rest easily in many configurations. If you need back support there are floor chairs; I have one and use it sometimes, but not always.

Why do you associate the pain with your job when you had the job before running and the pain arrived after running? Seems to me that the running brought to light issues that were a bit slow to heal.

The secret, while you have the pain, is to stay tuned into it while doing different exercises and activities until you find the muscle combinations that avoid it. General physical therapy exercises that make you use your hip muscles, and weightlifting, both help you notice that your hip hurts when you do this, but not when you do that.

Running its worth getting a coach or join a club for advice on technique. Would be nice to mix in some other activity that makes you stronger. I hope you have a proper monitor and keyboard, laptops are terrible for you.

Hey man a lot of this resonates and has improved greatly after I started focusing on core strength which I had never before. Worth trying but be careful. Wish I had of started in my 30s though. Good luck.

Oh man. Do not mean to sound rude & wish I could type out more right now, buy plenty suffering from these problems haha. Some from their tweens, ruining their careers before they've even begun with things like Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, Pelvic Floor Dysfunction...

Misery is very, very much out there. Loves company as well. Having a few million dollars would only fix 1/3 of my problems I suppose. Money would definitely put me on the right path to being able to possibly get better, but some medical conditions you get for no damn reason are hard to manage with even the best of the doctors within the U.S., and some people with said medical problems don't even have parents who give the slightest fuck about them. Cruel world sometimes, fairly easy to insulate from if you're healthy in the first world tho...

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