What are we doing to ourselves!?

Sitting all day in front of a computer is bad for your spine. But you already knew that. Below ill detail out exactly why it’s bad for you and maybe suggest some small things you can do to mitigate the damage.

But first, a bit about how my interest developed. I’ll put a heading after this section if you just want to get to the spine helpin’ stuff so you can easily skip it.

I’ve been a competitive fighter since I was 17 and have spent my entire adult life training and preparing for various competitions through which I have endured some pretty gnarly injuries. I was around 24 when they started to pile up. First, I tore my ACL defending a takedown preparing for an MMA fight which initially sent me into rehab for 6 months. I had 3 appointments a week but the facility had a program where you could pay a certain monthly fee and use the facility as much as you wanted. Naturally, I was there every day. I developed a close relationship with my physical therapist who now sponsors me and continues to help in my fight career (shout out, Steve Trocchio at Trocchio Training now living in Fort, Worth, Texas).

During my rehab, I decided to go back to school and make a second attempt at finishing my English degree at Florida State. I found myself sitting in front of computer for upwards of 6 hours a day (which is a lot when you can’t sit still in college, lol) and that was enough for me to notice some creeks and cracks in my joints.

After I was cleared to fight, it was about 4 months later in a fight in Miami where I took on my next major injury. Two slipped discs in my neck. It was actually one of my best performances too. I won the fight, felt a little pinch in the neck but nothing major and then woke up the next day in the most intense pain of my life. I had lost the ability to really move or use my left arm at all, couldn’t feel most of it, and couldn’t even get out of bed without help.

Back to rehab, this time I had an open tab at the facility and a running joke with the staff about how I was going to put my time spent there on my resume.

Spent about 4 months there that time and then of course, three weeks after I completed my neck therapy, broke my foot walking (???). I rolled my ankle and snapped my fifth metatarsal in what is known as a ‘Jones’ fracture which also required surgery and physical therapy. Overall, I spent the better part of 4 years in therapy so I got to know everyone at Tallahassee Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy very well (I would recommend Jenny if you’re about to head in there for something).

This all led to a convincing argument my Dad made to me one day about being your own authority. When things happen to you as much as they have to me, it pays off to do your own research. I was in a writing job sitting at a desk all day after college and reinjured my neck without the fun of the sport attached to it and I felt jipped for my pain. I did my own research about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle and revisited it for this post.

I’ll just include the stuff for sitting at desks because that’s the most directly important to programmers.

There are 2 major spinal issues that most people face in careers where they are sitting down for most of the day. Neck pain (cervical spine), and lower-back pain(lumbar spine).

For the neck, or cervical issues, it occurs from what’s known as a ‘forward head position’ which results mostly from sitting and looking forward into a computer.

This is usually accompanied by an upper body kyphosis. This is the rounding forward of your shoulders and chest which limits the mobility of your cervical spine and puts pressure on the areas which build tension in the surrounding muscles of your upper back and neck and cause pain.

What you can do about it.

Firstly, avoid the forward head posture as much as possible. Secondly, from a personal perspective, a good sleeping position is C R I T I C A L for happiness the next day. Aim to keep your head up and chin tucked in while sleeping as much as possible.

Aside from just avoiding bad posture there are some exercises you can do. Ultimately, you’ll want to fight against the kyphosis as much as possible with your exercises which will help to limit your forward head posture. The idea is to rotate your shoulders backward in the opposite direction as the kyphosis to take pressure off the neck and let you have an easier time staying out of that forward head position.

You can do this by strengthening or tightening the muscles in the posterior shoulder (back of the shoulder) and loosening the anterior or front side of the shoulders and pecs.

Something called the doorway stretch is a good place to start for loosening up those muscles in the front.

Then, you can do some external rotations with a resistance band to help with your shoulders and couple that with some rows to strengthen the scapula and upper back region. Some good examples below.

from a personal perspective, the doorway stretches, external rotations, pull ups, and rows are what works for me.

Then there’s the lower back. I feel like everyone has lower back issues so this should be no surprise for most people. Most of the lower back issues come from sitting in a chair all day. It causes something called reciprocal inhibition in your glutes and hip flexors.

When you sit all day, you promote a chronic tightening or shortening of your hip flexors (the muscle right where your pocket sits). This causes a reciprocal inhibition in your glute max which causes your body to basically forget how to fire those muscles. When your glutes stop firing as much, it causes an anterior pelvic shift which ultimately causes a chronic pinch in your lower back. This is the main cause of this popular form of back pain.

You can work against it in the same way with stretching and strengthening of the right muscle groups.

Firstly, working on activating your glutes and making them strong and powerful is one good way to fight against this. Hilariously enough, the exercises that best do this, are also leading causes to lower back pain in their own right if done incorrectly. I’m talking about movements like squats and deadlifts. I would instead opt for some less intense workouts that activate the glutes that could help alleviate the pain.

The angry cat stretch is a good place to start for your lower back.

then the sprinter stretch for the hip flexors

Then, you might do some lower ab workouts which should work to help rotate those hips backward and alleviate that pinch I previously mentioned. Jeff Nippard on youtube is a great resource for truly useless exercises.

According to him, hanging leg raises best activate the lower abs to accomplish this task.

One that has had great success for me is an endurance wall sit coupled with some controlled hip thrusts. It lets me sit there and focus on the activation of the glute in the wall sit and then when the glutes fully activated, the hip thrusts give me plyometric strength push which is just fun as well.

The main goal for this one is to strengthen the lower abs and glutes, and loosen the hip flexors as much as possible.

Hope this helps!

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