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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of advise someone gave me. Deadlifting gets rid of back pain. So I don't have an insane amount of weights, but I have roughly 30 to 40lb I can deadlift at home, which does not sound impressive at all, but coincidentally, mundane tasks that would give me back pain no longer did. Also coincidentally, my ability to do pull ups went from 0 to several reps per day. When I stopped, the back pain came back, but now I just deadlift once a week, I picked a mundane amount of weight that is easy, I take my time unless I feel like I can do it quickly with the smaller amount of weight.

You don't need to lift 300lb or whatever and weightlift max to make your body more efficient, you just need to weight lift just enough that you find yourself somewhat getting tired, I don't even work out until I am tired sometimes, and it still feels like it does a lot for my body.

So I've come to learn that in general exercise is good for you overall.

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Totally agree. I'll add as an aging "woke up sore" guy, side-sleeping with a knee pillow (just a regular pillow to prevent your knees from aching from pressure) was an enormous improvement.

I also hear that resistance bands as gimicky as they sound, they can be helpful especially for the elderly who have lost mobility, physical therapists on YouTube will say things like: elderly people who cannot go up or down the stairs after using resistance bands find they've regained mobility.

So don't ever sleep on exercise, my biggest take away is you don't need to be a super weight lifter or whatever, you just need to do enough every week that it keeps your body going.

I'm 43 and do mostly stretchy band exercises for upper body workouts to help my neck, shoulder, and arms where I have chronic pain. Takes up very little space, I can do 5-10 minutes throughout the day, and 20 minutes after doing a few sets my pain is much better.

You can actually build some muscle this way - nothing impressive, but way more than I had when I wasn't doing any upper body work.

You have me a good idea. My granny can barely walk. She recently started getting constant alarms on her apple watch about Atrial fibrillation - poor cardiovascular shape.

Excruciating exercising with resistance bands is something she could do too - already started her on doing simple biceps exercises with small weights.

I (lifelong side sleeper) started using a (dedicated) knee pillow about a decade ago and I am completely torn about them. On the one hand: amazing. Better spinal alignment, zero sensitivity or soreness where the knees meet, better sleep, easily the best $10 I ever spent. On the other hand: I can no longer tolerate the weight of my knees on each other for even a minute. Can’t sleep or even just side-lay for more than thirty seconds without a pillow or a folded blanket or something between my knees without it aching like hell and being too uncomfortable to bear. From speaking to others that adopted knee pillows, it seems to be the same: once you use them, you can never go back.

So now I marvel at how I used to be able to sleep without them and ponder over why we either have no fatty pads (or muscle, even!) on the inside sides of our knees or have reduced sensitivity in that region, since we’re clearly meant to be side sleepers (it’s the healthiest position, assuming you can find a rock or log to place under your head, or even just your hands folded together).

The book I have on how to sleep properly says that on your side you hook your big toe around the Achilles' tendon of the other foot, this offsets the knees.

But it also said to sleep on the floor, and no thanks.

Yes, I found that as a workaround but I can't help but feel it's maladaptive since your spine is no longer aligned.

> I take my time unless I feel like I can do it quickly with the smaller amount of weight

What does that mean for you in practice, how long and how many reps?

The more weight the better. There is an expression: break your comfort zone. But more important is an (almost) perfect exercise technique. Then resistance training makes unexpected wonders in all ages.

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