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One of the most amazing books I've read about simple ways to correct the muscular imbalances that result from too much sitting is Pete Egoscue's Pain Free at Yo

One of the most amazing books I've read about simple ways to correct the muscular imbalances that result from too much sitting is Pete Egoscue's Pain Free at Your PC [1]. His other book, Pain Free [2] is also extremely effective and informative. The first part of Pain Free explains how muscular imbalances form and, most insightful to me, how every human body has the same design range of motion (with a few exceptions due to birth defects or disease), that is every human body is designed to have the same range of motion but muscular imbalances formed as the result of specific repeated activities (or lack of activity) impede that design range of motion. All of the exercises in the Egoscue Method require no special equipment, only simple things like a chair or a wall (which further convinced me that it's not a fad out to sell something). Highly recommend reading these books if you're interested in this topic. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Pain-Free-Revolutionary-Stopping-Chronic/dp/0553379887 https://www.amazon.com/Pain-Free-Revolutionary-Stopping-Chro... 2. https://www.amazon.com/Pain-Free-Your-PC-Computer/dp/0553380524 https://www.amazon.com/Pain-Free-Your-PC-Computer/dp/0553380...

tgb 9y ago
Isn't this obviously false? First, humans weren't designed at all. Second, the range of motion is often determined by bone structure, which no amount of muscle imbalance can affect. Check out squatting positions and how they're affected by the variety of hip joint shapes people have. Like this page: https://squatuniversity.com/2016/03/25/how-hip-anatomy-affects-squat-mechanics/ https://squatuniversity.com/2016/03/25/how-hip-anatomy-affec...
- muninn_ 9y ago
  For people with back pain, for example, sitting incorrectly or for prolonged periods of time can cause certain muscle to not activate when they're supposed to. I recently went through physical therapy for this in which my range of motion was increased due to flexibility exercises. All humans have a "basic" range of motion, but your effective range of motion can in fact be affected by things such as sitting too much. And you could argue humans were designed by evolution. I don't think the OP meant some alien in a garage sat down and just drew up what humans should be.
  - tgb 9y ago
    I'm not arguing against that, I'm arguing against "how every human body has the same design range of motion." I don't think that everyone achieves their potential range of motion equally well but I definitely also don't think everyone has the same potential range of motion. The problem with calling us "designed" is that it makes it sound like we are all built to some universal specification. This is not true, but the parent post acts as if it is. Whatever evolution does (call it design if you must), it does not act particularly strongly to get all humans the same potential range of motion.
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      Hm. I'm not sure I agree. There aren't many humans that can just turn their necks around like an owl. It's not a range of motion that the human body is really capable of, so there may be some people who can twist their neck further than others, but we basically have the same range of motion or even potential same range of motion. In that respect, humans are "designed" to only have a certain range of motion, which kind of implies some sort of genetic specification. Otherwise if we did not have a mostly uniform range of motion (when taken as a whole) we'd have noodle people and owl people and people that could kick the back of their head or something. But we don't.
      - tgb 9y ago
        Did you view the link I provided in my first reply? I think it shows that there are substantial differences, enough to make a statement that we all have the same design range of motion either meaningless or wrong. Edit: to illustrate why I think it's so wrong to make such a statment, let's consider one of its implications. If we all have the same design range of motion and all differences are caused my muscle imbalances, then when I see someone do something I can't do, I have to conclude that the difference is a muscle imbalance. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the difference most of the time, but I think it's clearly false to say that's the correct conclusion all of the time. So I would sometimes be wrongly concluding that muscle balances are my problem and might wrongly attempt motions that I'm incapable of or waste time on exercises that can't help.
    - 9y ago
- criddell 9y ago
  > First, humans weren't designed at all. Oh come on. You know what he means.
  - tgb 9y ago
    It's not wrong to care about phrasing when that phrasing leads to wrong results. Anthropomorphising evolution as a designer is a classic mistake to make precisely because it causes us to make real mistakes. The parent post makes a big claim which is based entirely off a mistaken metaphor.
    - sn9 9y ago
      Even biologists and anatomists use the same language as shorthand when they know the audience understands what the shorthand means. It's just more convenient.
p1esk 9y ago
The problem with articles like this is they're too long. I understand the problem (prolonged sitting is bad for me), and I don't want to read entire books. I, like most people, just need to know a single exercise. If you start telling me about a second one I could do, I just won't do anything. Also, describing exercises in words or even static pictures is a bad idea. Just make a short (30 sec max) video, so I can just watch that and do it from now on.
- runamok 9y ago
  The problem is there isn't a silver bullet "single exercise". Frankly if an article with 7 pictures is too long for you to invest in your health that is concerning. The video suggestion is a good one though I have a similar complaint about many videos in that they spend 5 minutes showing you what should take 10 seconds to demonstrate (not to mention ads). I suggest you just look at the pictures. They are fairly self explanatory.
  - p1esk 9y ago
    I did look at the pictures. I've read most of the article. It's well-written. However, all I remember now (3 hours later) is that there are a dozen of different exercises, and they're already fading in my memory. Even though I now know the problem, I don't quite know what I should do, and tomorrow I'll probably forget about it. A single exercise, even if not the best, is still better than nothing, and it's something that I could think about doing right now. And I'm more health oriented than most people I know. Maybe they should put TLDR at the top with the absolute minimum we should do.
    - runamok 9y ago
      Fair enough. What I usually do is copy-pasta the whole thing to a word doc and try to get it down to one or two pages by deleting text and resizing images. Print the thing out and tape it somewhere noticeable (near the home TV?) until you have internalized them. Probably the minimum you should do is go for occasional walking breaks.
    - 9y ago

tgb 9y ago

Isn't this obviously false? First, humans weren't designed at all. Second, the range of motion is often determined by bone structure, which no amount of muscle imbalance can affect. Check out squatting positions and how they're affected by the variety of hip joint shapes people have. Like this page: https://squatuniversity.com/2016/03/25/how-hip-anatomy-affects-squat-mechanics/ https://squatuniversity.com/2016/03/25/how-hip-anatomy-affec...

muninn_ 9y ago
For people with back pain, for example, sitting incorrectly or for prolonged periods of time can cause certain muscle to not activate when they're supposed to. I recently went through physical therapy for this in which my range of motion was increased due to flexibility exercises. All humans have a "basic" range of motion, but your effective range of motion can in fact be affected by things such as sitting too much. And you could argue humans were designed by evolution. I don't think the OP meant some alien in a garage sat down and just drew up what humans should be.
- tgb 9y ago
  I'm not arguing against that, I'm arguing against "how every human body has the same design range of motion." I don't think that everyone achieves their potential range of motion equally well but I definitely also don't think everyone has the same potential range of motion. The problem with calling us "designed" is that it makes it sound like we are all built to some universal specification. This is not true, but the parent post acts as if it is. Whatever evolution does (call it design if you must), it does not act particularly strongly to get all humans the same potential range of motion.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    Hm. I'm not sure I agree. There aren't many humans that can just turn their necks around like an owl. It's not a range of motion that the human body is really capable of, so there may be some people who can twist their neck further than others, but we basically have the same range of motion or even potential same range of motion. In that respect, humans are "designed" to only have a certain range of motion, which kind of implies some sort of genetic specification. Otherwise if we did not have a mostly uniform range of motion (when taken as a whole) we'd have noodle people and owl people and people that could kick the back of their head or something. But we don't.
    - tgb 9y ago
      Did you view the link I provided in my first reply? I think it shows that there are substantial differences, enough to make a statement that we all have the same design range of motion either meaningless or wrong. Edit: to illustrate why I think it's so wrong to make such a statment, let's consider one of its implications. If we all have the same design range of motion and all differences are caused my muscle imbalances, then when I see someone do something I can't do, I have to conclude that the difference is a muscle imbalance. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the difference most of the time, but I think it's clearly false to say that's the correct conclusion all of the time. So I would sometimes be wrongly concluding that muscle balances are my problem and might wrongly attempt motions that I'm incapable of or waste time on exercises that can't help.
  - 9y ago
criddell 9y ago
> First, humans weren't designed at all. Oh come on. You know what he means.
- tgb 9y ago
  It's not wrong to care about phrasing when that phrasing leads to wrong results. Anthropomorphising evolution as a designer is a classic mistake to make precisely because it causes us to make real mistakes. The parent post makes a big claim which is based entirely off a mistaken metaphor.
  - sn9 9y ago
    Even biologists and anatomists use the same language as shorthand when they know the audience understands what the shorthand means. It's just more convenient.

p1esk 9y ago

The problem with articles like this is they're too long. I understand the problem (prolonged sitting is bad for me), and I don't want to read entire books. I, like most people, just need to know a single exercise. If you start telling me about a second one I could do, I just won't do anything. Also, describing exercises in words or even static pictures is a bad idea. Just make a short (30 sec max) video, so I can just watch that and do it from now on.

runamok 9y ago
The problem is there isn't a silver bullet "single exercise". Frankly if an article with 7 pictures is too long for you to invest in your health that is concerning. The video suggestion is a good one though I have a similar complaint about many videos in that they spend 5 minutes showing you what should take 10 seconds to demonstrate (not to mention ads). I suggest you just look at the pictures. They are fairly self explanatory.
- p1esk 9y ago
  I did look at the pictures. I've read most of the article. It's well-written. However, all I remember now (3 hours later) is that there are a dozen of different exercises, and they're already fading in my memory. Even though I now know the problem, I don't quite know what I should do, and tomorrow I'll probably forget about it. A single exercise, even if not the best, is still better than nothing, and it's something that I could think about doing right now. And I'm more health oriented than most people I know. Maybe they should put TLDR at the top with the absolute minimum we should do.
  - runamok 9y ago
    Fair enough. What I usually do is copy-pasta the whole thing to a word doc and try to get it down to one or two pages by deleting text and resizing images. Print the thing out and tape it somewhere noticeable (near the home TV?) until you have internalized them. Probably the minimum you should do is go for occasional walking breaks.
  - 9y ago