Why Do We Feel Pain? How to Manage Your Pain - Without Drugs What Causes Leg Cramps and How Can You Stop Them? Sign Up for Our Living with Chronic Pain NewsletterThanks for signing up!Sign up for more FREE Everyday Health newsletters.SubmitWe respect your privacy.After a long day at work, you might look forward to relaxing with friends or family, or maybe getting a good workout at the gym. But if sitting at your desk for hours makes your hip pain unbearable by day’s end, your plans might be limited to crawling to your couch to nurse your sore hip.Try some simple, quick exercises at your desk that will help ease hip pain.Hip Pain: Exercises That Help"When hip pain becomes a problem, you need to keep your core strong,” says Rochelle Rosian, MD, a rheumatologist with the Cleveland Clinic in Solon, Ohio.Working the quadriceps muscles on the front of your thighs, stretching your hamstrings (the back of your thighs), and doing squats can also help alleviate hip pain.Each of these exercises only takes a few minutes, and can be done quickly and easily a couple times a day.
Deep hamstring stretch: Stand up next to your desk, with your right leg stretched in front of your left (standing with your legs like open scissors).Put both hands on your right thigh, bend your left knee, and bend forward.Bend a little deeper at your middle and press a little deeper over your left knee until you feel a deep stretch in your right hamstring. Hold that pose between 10 and 15 seconds, and then switch to the other leg.Quadriceps stretchStanding beside your desk, bend your left leg back at the knee and bring your heel to your bottom. Keep your knees together and grab your foot with your left hand.Stretch the thigh more deeply by pulling your foot closer to your bottom, but stop at the point that it hurts.Repeat a few times until your thigh feels loosened; try to get your heel to touch your bottom.Repeat with your right leg.Wall sitsStand with your back against a wall, with feet slightly apart and about 16 inches away from the wall.Slowly bend your knees until they are at about a 90-degree angle (no more) with your thighs, and you're sitting in an imaginary chair with your back leaning against the wall.
Hold for 30 seconds, then slide your back up the wall to return to a standing position with your legs straight.Curling hamstringsStand behind your desk chair, resting your hands on the top of the chair for balance.Standing on your left leg with the left knee slightly bent, curl your right foot behind you.Curl your foot until your heel touches your bottom, then straighten the leg and put your foot back on the floor.Repeat between 12 and 15 times with each leg.Sitting hamstring stretchSitting in your desk chair, slide both hands, palm-up, beneath your right thigh.Pull your knee into your chest, and stretch your leg out in front of you.Repeat between three and five times for each leg.Taking a break every few hours to do these simple movements will keep tension from building and help keep you limber throughout the day.The wrong chair = real health problems. (Total read time: 8 minutes) In this post I’ll cover how I identified the best high-end chairs in the world, which I ultimately chose, and the tangible results that followed.
In January of 2005, I found myself on a veranda in Panama after the usual afternoon rain, dreaming of the upcoming year and reflecting on lessons learned since leaving the US. Maria Elena, the matriarch of the Panamanian family that had adopted me, sipped her iced tea and pointed at my bruised feet: “Tim, let me share some advice I was once given. Buy the most comfortable bed and pair of shoes you can afford. If you’re not in one, you’ll be in the other.” I followed her advice upon returning to CA and the results were sudden: Plantar Fasciitis disappeared, as did shoulder impingement after switching from coil-spring to foam-layered mattresses. But what about chairs? On January 4th, 2009, I tweeted out the following: “Is the Aeron chair worth it? http://tr.im/2uxd Do you have any fave chairs for extended sitting and writing?” Even though I’m financially comfortable now, I didn’t grow up spending a lot of money, which I’m thankful for. To this day, I’ve never paid for first-class airfare for myself.
Not that it isn’t worth it — I just can’t do it. Similarly, I had trouble believing a chair could possibly be worth $850-$1,200, but my back pain led me to pose the question to the omniscient Interweb. More than 95% of Aeron users replied with “yes, absolutely”, but it wasn’t the only chair with a cult-like following. Four of the five are manufactured by Herman Miller (HM) and Humanscale (HS). Prices are from Amazon, as are the star reviews, but discounts of $200-400 can be negotiated with dealers. Both eBay and Craiglist offer similar discounts. In descending order of popularity: 1. Aeron (Fully loaded) (HM) – $879 (1 review; average review: 5 stars) Used at NASA mission control and tech start-ups worldwide.2. Mirra (fully loaded) (HM) – $829 (14 reviews; average review: 4.5 stars) Note: the Herman Miller sales representatives I spoke with preferred the Mirra seat feel for shorter legs vs. the Aeron. Easier to adjust: Mirra is about 9 revolutions from loosest to tightest settings;
3. SwingChair – $495 Recommended by a strong contingent of writers, including one of my favorite visual storytellers, Kathy Sierra. I like the design concept, but I would suggest other forms of “core exercise”. 4. Liberty (HS) – $899 (6 reviews; average review: 3.5 stars) 5. Freedom Task Chair with Headrest (HS) – $999.99 (1 review, average: 4 stars) Used at the FBI and by other governmental agencies with three-letter acronyms. 6. Embody – $1,800 list price (negotiated with dealer: $1,200-1,300): Basis of chair design – sitting is bad; Even in locked position, it still has some backward flex at the top position. No forward tilt option. For personal testing, I also added a Swiss-ball chair (Isokinetics Balance Ball Chair – $75) to the mix, as seen below: Surprisingly, the Isokinetics chair is more comfortable than most fixed chairs I tested, though there is some minor… ahem… testicular compression that isn’t nearly as pleasant as it sounds.
If you don’t have jewels to worry about, this chair could well be an ideal cost-effective choice. The chair I most wanted to test was the Mirra, which seems to have the best combination of price point (bought used or via eBay) and multiple 5-star reviews. Not to mention it’s also the name of one of the best BMXers of all time. In the end, I bought a used C-size (technically a bit too large for me) Aeron for $450 on Craigslist. I’m impatient and didn’t want to wait over the weekend to schedule sittings for other Herman Miller chairs with a certified dealer. Once I have some conclusive comparable data, I want closure.I’m 5′ 8″ and 170 lbs., but the C works with no problem. 1) The lumbar support is — by far — the primary determinant of comfort or pain. I’ve lowered this adjustment and found that maintaining the natural S-curve through pressure on the lower back is what prevents pain most consistently. Comfortable sitting time is now 7-8 hours vs. less than 2 hours, with no ill after-effects.
Sliding lumbar support on the Aeron. 2) Seat height (and secondarily, depth) will determine the rest. If the flats of your feet don’t make complete contact with the floor, you will move your hips forward and slouch, eliminating the S-curve in the lower lumbar. If your seat is too low and your knees are above your hips, you will shorten the habitual range your hip flexors (negative neural adaptation) and end up with severe lower-back pain. Aim to keep your hamstrings parallel to the floor, and if the seat is too long for your femur (thigh bone) — as is mildly the case with my C-size Aeron — just separate your knees a bit. If you’re not wearing a tight skirt, I’ve found a basketball of space between the knees to provide the best lateral stabilization, which reduces torso fatigue. Take off heels when sitting at a desk, lest you end up with hot calves and Quasimodo-like posture. Not good for mating. If you are wearing a tight skirt, I suggest taking up the Japanese tea ceremony and sitting on tatami side saddle.
It’ll be more comfortable than crossing your legs all day.True, I’ve thought more about chairs in the last few weeks than anyone should, but I do it to save you the trouble. Benefit from my OCD so you can obsess on other things. 3) Using a 3′ long and 6″ diameter foam roller three times per day for 5 minutes can eliminate persistent middle-back pain from mediocre chair use; conversely, it can extend your comfortable sitting time by 30-40%. Knowledge workers often log more ass-in-seat time than sleep. Coders, in particular, are often subjected to a steady diet of Mountain Dew and hunching for 12+-hour marathons. I don’t put in these hours, but I found myself with severe mid-upper back pain from using a non-adjustable chair and craning over a desk that was too low, even for 30-60 minutes per day. Two doctors suggested various therapies, but a quick experiment (placing a laptop on top of a dresser and writing while standing for two days) proved that posture was the problem.
In less than a week following my switch to the Aeron, all upper middle-back (lower trapezius, rhomboid major) pain disappeared completely. The results: better output during work and writing, faster and deeper sleep, and a huge smack on the forehead. Why the hell didn’t I do this earlier? In my case, was it worth it at $450? Particularly looking at the value of time per hour and the lost income due to doctor visits, massage, etc., this is $450 I should have invested years ago. Odds and Ends: Twitter Giveaway WinnersThe travel bag and Fujitsu color travel scanner are gone. More giveaways coming here this week… Posted on: January 27, 2009. Please check out Tools of Titans, my new book, which shares the tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers. It was distilled from more than 10,000 pages of notes, and everything has been vetted and tested in my own life in some fashion. The tips and tricks in Tools of Titans changed my life, and I hope the same for you.