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Show HN: A 15 min daily stretch routine for desk workers
- avinassh 3y agoI work from home and these days, I spend about 3-4 hours in calls (with camera off). What exercises or stretches I can do to make most of this time?
- almara 3y agoI created this side project for my partner, who is constantly complaining about how stiff his body is. Hopefully it’ll help other tech workers stretch out and feel better! (PS: this is my first project launch so any feedback would be greatly appreciated).
- balls187 3y agoIs the intention to have tech workers do this during a short break or before, after work? Seeing the iconography of women in yoga clothes invokes “workout” which means “I do this before/after work” and “I need to change out of my work clothes.”
- saurik 3y agoOr, you could just wear yoga clothes to work?
- peter_l_downs 3y agoJust wanted to say congratulations on launching your first project! This is quite well done. One piece of feedback: I'm sure your partner trusts you and has asked you how you came up with this routine, but we random internet users can't do that and the site currently doesn't do anything to convince us that we should follow this routine. One way you could build trust with your users is by including a link to the source for the routine, or a short explanation of why you've chosen these stretches, in this order. Another way you could approach the problem of building trust is by making the routine adjustable or editable, or allowing the user to pick between different routines or exercises. I think it will be hard to get someone to commit to doing 15 minutes of stretching, every day, without doing some kind of education or somehow building this trust. Again, great launch / v1, and congratulations! No need to try to make it anything more than this if your target demographic (your partner) is already happy :)
- movedx 3y agoYou've done a great job. Well done. I went through about 10 minutes. Some of the stretches I couldn't do at my desk - they require too much room. Make sure you've giving people time to see what the exercise is, to learn it, before starting the count down. Also, if you could show a hint of sorts of the next, up coming exercise, a user might be able to get ready for it and continuously flow between stretches once some experience with them has been gained. And maybe see if you can provide an option that allows one to stretch actually at their desk, with little to no getting up from the chair... I know, not ideal, but a 3-5 minutes routine in the chair is better than the nothing most of us do now. Thank you!
- throwaway292939 3y agoNeat! How did you make the graphics for these poses? Love them!
- danieltait 3y agoNice! A good reminder for me to stretch today. I'm currently working in the least ergonomic position possible bent over on the sofa with laptop on my chest. Will try your full routine later
- brodouevencode 3y agoRecommend adding a couch stretch to the routine. It's basically the silver bullet for most hip flexor issues (which may manifest as lower back pain)
- almara 3y agoGreat idea thanks! That's what I'll be working on next, creating fixed routines besides the daily one for people to do in various situations/with different objectives.
- replwoacause 3y agoWill give this a try. My lower back pain has been awful lately.
- almara 3y agoAwesome! Let me know what you think
- civilaircraft 3y agoOn the same topic, I highly recommend the new book Built to Move that can benefit all of us desk workers.
- ericmay 3y agoI'm reading that now as well. One of the interesting things so far is the author asserts that stretching does nothing for you, which I find controversial and doesn't align with my experience but I also don't have any evidence or reason per-se to contradict that claim either. I do know that a 15-minute "stretch routine" should either substitute or incorporate push-ups, squats, and other, similar basic movements in the routine. Stretching on its own is quite pointless if it's also coupled with continued sitting the entire day and not much other physical activity (walking, weight lifting, running, swimming, sports, w/e).
- shagymoe 3y ago>the author asserts that stretching does nothing for you I'm struggling to find a response to this. My personal results from daily stretching are so profound but could be written off as "anecdotal". I'd find it very hard to take this person seriously unless there was some caveat or qualifying information.
- mscccc 3y agoThe author is Kelly Starrett, a legend in the physical therapy/movement world. I've read a lot of his work. I don't think his message is that stretching "does nothing". It's more that, research has shown that combining stretching with strength (using the range of motion) is the way to create lasting change.
- ericmay 3y agoI may be misremembering but I thought his wife and him (since they are co-authors) explicitly said something along the lines of don't even bother wasting time stretching. It's near or at the beginning of the first chapter. "Do it if it makes you feel good but it's a waste of time" or something. Please correct me if I'm misremembering or outright incorrect. I don't have the book nearby to check.
- awb 3y agoThanks for sharing! Super helpful and easy to follow. One suggestion: Audio queues would be great. I heard a beep when it was first starting but not after that (iOS). And maybe a gong or chime sound would be more relaxing.
- almara 3y agoGlad you enjoyed it! And ouch, just tested it and indeed the sound isn't playing in iOS. I'll have a look and also fix the responsiveness
- ziti 3y agoThanks for sharing! https://www.wellandgood.com/release-stress-muscles/ https://www.wellandgood.com/release-stress-muscles/ Found this post the other day, similar vein - movement is medicine!
- hecanjog 3y agoBoy did I ever need to do this, thanks! I've bookmarked it. If you'd like feedback, it would be nice for new users like me to see the instructions for the next move during the "get ready" phase.
- almara 3y agoSo happy to hear that! Yep, another person commented the same thing so I do need to sort that out. Any ideas on how to make it clear that it's a break if I add the description to that screen? I don't really have much more space to play with sadly (for mobile at least).
- almara 3y agoJust changed the break btw! Now it says 'Next:' in the title and displays the description as suggested :)
- shekhar101 3y agoThis is excellent! I just followed along the routine and 2 small feedbacks: 1. Please show the instructions before the stretch begins. Right now it says get ready for the next stretch. It would be useful to be able to read instructions before the stretch starts. 2. Beeps can be slightly shorter. In long term, I can see it getting a little annoying. Other than that, excellent work and great illustrations. Thank you!
- almara 3y agoMakes sense, thank you! I initially thought having the 'get ready for the next exercise' would help people understand that it's a break but given the feedback I definitely need the descriptions there too. Any idea on how to still make it clear that it's a break? Re: the beeps, couldn't agree more. While building it I also found them annoying but I deprioritised that for the first launch.
- cachecrab 3y agoYou could use this stretching video as inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAf67xFS-qE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAf67xFS-qE I've watched this one several times and like how she presents it.
- ochoseis 3y agoHere’s another I really like. It adds in some light static strength holds. https://youtu.be/4BOTvaRaDjI https://youtu.be/4BOTvaRaDjI
- Vinnl 3y ago> Any idea on how to still make it clear that it's a break? Not a UX designer, but you could consider having a de-emphasised (smaller font, subdued colour, no illustration) "Next:" underneath every instruction that describes what's upcoming. For regular exercises, that could just say "Break", whereas during the breaks, it could show the next exercise. That way, it's always clear what's the current task and what's up next.
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- zakokor 3y agoCongrats! Looks great. Any plans for the future?
- keerthiko 3y agoIt is really good as is, do there really need to be any further "plans for the future" beyond "keep it up and running, minor UX fixes"? I wish we were more okay as a society with some good things staying good and simple.
- almara 3y agoI'd like the main focus of the app to continue to be the daily routine as I think it's a nice nudge to a create a simple habit with great health benefits. Having said that, I have a couple of routines lined up that target specific body parts for those days when you want to really go for the stiffest areas (ETA: these would just live permanently in the page).
- dukeofdoom 3y agoBlood clots in your legs from sitting at a computer too long can kill you.
- ajonit 3y agoKudos! Desk workers are going to love this. You have kept the duration short and gamified it as well in the form of streaks. It should go viral. A piece of feedback for the transition between two exercises. You may want to stop the bottom watch altogether during transition and - somewhere on top right -start a simple circular time animation 5..4..3 In the current form the transition looks bit confusing. In any case, congrats again for the launch.
- almara 3y agoYep I definitely need to work on that transition (I'm the type of person that spaces out easily and would lose track of whether I'm in a break or exercise). I'll play around with a couple of ideas and hopefully resolve it tomorrow
- jamie_ca 3y agoLooks awesome. If you can swing it with a proper manifest.json to let it add to iOS home screen without throwing it into Safari (https://johan.im/writings/ios-homescreen-web-app/ https://johan.im/writings/ios-homescreen-web-app/) that'd also be amazing.
- dugmartin 3y agoThanks for building this! Next step is hooking up a Slackbot with daily reminders and selling it to businesses as an employee wellness program. I think the 40+ person I work at would sign up for it
- almara 3y agoThanks! You might see a B2B version coming soon ;)
- dugmartin 3y agoAdd a login and a private employee leaderboard for social pressure :)
- almara 3y agoYep! Who doesn't love a bit of gamification?
- TomK32 3y agoI have just one KOM on strava but I keep telling everyone about it. It's also the most stupid one in town, a sprint on a bridge...
- Aaronstotle 3y agoin 2020 when i got really into cycling, I was local legend of a big hill I would climb and I was very excited about it
- Brystephor 3y agolooks neat! I think I found a couple of bugs: 1. East seated twist left and right have their icons switched. The twist left states to put your left hand on your right knee, but it shows the person with their left hand on the back of the chair. 2. When you first start and are on the 5 second count down page, you can scroll through exercises. 3. Once that 5 second page moves on, if you're on the first exercise and click back, it takes you to the last exercise in the routine. I found this unintuitive since I was actually trying to see what the 5 second page was telling me and didn't realize it was just a "get ready" countdown.
- almara 3y agoWell spotted! 1. Fixed 2. Sorry I didn't quite get this, do you mind explaining it more in detail? 3. Working on it
- zufallsheld 3y agoAs per 2: If I have to use my left hand, the figure should use its right hand. This way I can mirror the figure so from my perspective both hands move to the left.
- glonq 3y agoStretching is one of those things that you ignore when you are 20 but becomes vital when you are 50+. The main reason why we lose strength, flexibilty, balance, and endurance when we get old is because we let that happen. We stop exercising those attributes so they atrophy.
- TomK32 3y agoFaaaaar tooooo maaaaany bits in that routine, I can't even bother counting beyond ten. How about just six and repeat then two or three times? I won't need it myself as I have a standing desk with a bar stool if I need some rest and go to the gym during winter and roadbike in summer, but at the gym I have a muscle routine (turns out cyclists only have muscles in their legs) that is just eight stations with the classic 3x10-15 repeats.
- dogma1138 3y agoStanding desk doesn’t do squat for your flexibility. You should be able using both hands to reach every spot on your back or there about. You should be able to sit down on the floor with your hips bent at 90 degrees whilst both your legs are straight and your knees pointing upwards and unbent. You should be able to sit at 90 degrees to the floor straight on your ass whilst having your legs inter locked (“Indian sitting”) You should be able to sit down on your shins by bending your knees the top of the foot should be in line with your shins and your ass should be comfortably sitting on your ankles. (Japanese sitting) You should be able to touch your toes without bending your knees and preferably without flexing your back especially the lower and mid back. If you can’t do all 6 you need a routine to work on at least your weak spots.
- brailsafe 3y agoI agree, but looking at the routine it doesn't seem to do much for ham/mobility except the deep squat hold. What part is supposed to help with what you mention, assuming I'm missing something
- dogma1138 3y agoIt wasn’t a comment about this specific routine but more a reply to the GP. One of the reasons why I don’t like this specific routine is that it doesn’t stretch under load, to actually improve mobility your stretches need to be accompanied with a dynamic load such as body weight, balancing, free weight or a resistive band or cable. I also do not think that a routine that does not have a test to identify which muscles are too weak and which are overused and one which does not allow you to set specific mobility goals is going to be productive either.
- postsantum 3y agoShould have named differently. Title: Show HN: Stretch HN
- toddmatthews 3y agonice work!
- throwaway45467 3y agoThanks! FYI, on 2016 iPhone SE Safari, the pause button/counter/progress bar cover the text and make it unreadable. Will likely be using your app daily, though. The images clearly show what to do.
- almara 3y agoThanks for letting me know (and so happy that you'll be back)! I'll do more responsiveness fixes tomorrow as I based my media queries based on responsive testing in the chrome console and it definitely needs some work
- almara 3y ago(Should be fixed now!)
- throwaway45467 3y agoThanks!
- zufallsheld 3y agoMore feedback: I used it on my mobile but the screen went dark and the timer stopped. Is there a way for you to stop this? Awesome tool!
- almara 3y agoThanks! I had a couple of things implemented to avoid this but they haven't worked in mobile (in desktop it behaves as expected AFAIK, not turning off the screen while in the routine). Do you mind sharing your OS and browser?
- zufallsheld 3y agoI'm using Firefox 112 on Android 12.
- cadooo 3y agoReally like this. For the timer you should use a mono font so it doesn't jump around so much as it's ticking down. A sound between stretches would be helpful for the times I can't see the screen. Would be good to be able toggle off/on.
- markhnthoraway 3y agoOr if a mono font is too limiting - any font that supports the CSS rule `font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums` can be made to behave like a fixed-width font in this situation.
- almara 3y agoI have a (malfunctioning) beep but it doesn't work on mobile right now, I have to look into it. If you tried on desktop and it didn't work for you could you share what browser you used?
- M4v3R 3y agoI literally got back from a doctor today after having back pain and he prescribed me to do stretching exercises. These will come in handy, right on time. Thanks!
- almara 3y agoLook at that!
- it_citizen 3y ago15 min is too much for me to stay motivated, especially with all the other things I have to deal with, but I have been using that 5min routine in the morning to wake up my body https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef6LwAaB3_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef6LwAaB3_E It worked well. I have done it for the past 6 months.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- arco1991 3y agoVery nice! Maybe would be nice to have some different options, like a 5, 10 and 15 minute course and maybe some variance with different courses on different days of the week.
- danielvaughn 3y agoI've been trying to get into a routine where every time I take a bathroom break, I do like 10 pushups or something. Even a very small activity like that does wonders in getting the blood pumping, and actually helps me with my typical afternoon drowsiness.
- sva_ 3y agoI thought its a bad thing to stretch without warming up, or is that incorrect?
- 12907835202 3y agoA small improvement in my life I made was to always use the disabled toilet at work and spend a few seconds stretching and sometimes even doing 10 squats or push ups. I don't have the confidence to do something like that in front of other people. But now I do it 5 or so times a day everytime I pee. Perhaps I could add these stretches although 15 minutes is too long, perhaps in 5 lots of 3 or 2 minutes once an hour or something.
- 01100011 3y agoStretching is great. If you're older and having chronic back pain, consider the advice of Dr. Stuart McGill and avoid stretching your back. It probably feels good for you in the short-term, but you could be weakening the tissue surrounding your discs, setting yourself up for herniation, and causing other joint issues. I've had chronic back issues since I was 19 and they ended in my late 40s when I stopped stretching my back and focused on static strength exercises(McGill "big 3" plus lots of lat & trap strength training).
- asimpletune 3y agoA lot of back pain actually comes from tight hip flexors, quads, and glutes. Everything is connected and if you have a desk job, these things can get tight. This leads, counter-intuitively, to pain experienced in the lower back.
- downrightmike 3y agoSquats helped my back massively. Sad that I didn't try it sooner.
- maroonblazer 3y agoI had chronic lower back pain that a chiropractor, after 8 visits, couldn't fix. Did a yoga class and afterward asked the instructor if she could suggest any stretches. She surmised that stretching the psoas by grabbing my ankle and pulling my foot/leg behind me would help. Miracle cure.
- blueridge 3y agoAlso: https://andrewconner.com/fixing-back-pain/ https://andrewconner.com/fixing-back-pain/
- matthewhartmans 3y agoLove it OP! It's put together really well and I love the illustrations. Congrats on the release!
- almara 3y agoThank you so much!
- sinuhe69 3y agoGreat start! I suggest a voice over as well so people don’t have to look at the screen while they are doing the exercise. You can record your voice, or you can use nowadays a plethora of AI voices, for example ElevenLabs.
- mcapodici 3y agoThis is great. Without much shame, I will plug my free/open source stretch timer. https://stretchtimer.netlify.app/ https://stretchtimer.netlify.app/ This is not as visually appealing but might be nice for people who wish to customise their stretches or do a resistance workout.
- solarengineer 3y agoQuery: should one warm up before stretching to avoid injuries?
- andretti1977 3y agoReally good job, really good idea. My feedbacks are the same other told you. I would say it would be better if you suggest exercises one can do at the desk in an office. Some of the exercise simply cannot be performed in an office with other people! I think you are on a good way to a great side business project!
- patrickwalton 3y agoThis is great! I have a couple points of feedback: If I accidentally click out, there's no way to recover my place. A forward arrow or option to start at any pose by clicking in the preview would fix that. Some training poses would be helpful for those of us who can't touch the floor in triangle pose or can't maintain an upright torso in garland pose
- aghhelmut 3y agoIt's truly an awesome project! The design is simple, yet beautiful and the illustrations are easy to understand. I kinda like the way it looks the same on desktop and mobile. Nowadays we don't often see solutions like this, but the UX is great on both devices!
- tokyolights2 3y agoSlightly non-sequitur. The best thing that I ever did for my body wrt/ having a desk job is making sure that wherever I am my monitor is at eye level and at least 2ft away from my face. I always found that at the end of the work day I had so much tightness in my neck and temples, but once I started using a portable laptop stand [1] that all went away. [1] such as https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0192/8184/products/RoostStand-15profilehigh-V2.jpg?v=1669266645 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0192/8184/products/RoostSt...
- spydr 3y agoI’m using safari and I can’t figure out how to use this. The page seems static and there no no clickable buttons
- tasty_freeze 3y agoI'm seeing the same thing on firefox on win 11.
- wtk 3y agoIt doesn't work anymore?
- pipes 3y agoAm I missing something, none of the things that look like buttons do anything? I've tried chrome and Firefox on android
- jimmux 3y agoGreat timing with this! My workplace does a charity pushup challenge every year, and I usually create a team for people looking for alternative exercises. I was considering yoga for this year and was just looking for resources to help provide daily customised sessions. 1 minute of yoga/stretching = 3 pushups or something like that. This will really help fill the gaps, and I'll probably recommend it to people doing the regular pushup challenge for warmups and healthier workouts.