Unless you have an femoroacetabular impingement in which case its damaging, and could potentially lead to a labral tear which then destroys your liquid seal in the joint, increasing the chance of osteoarthritis. A condition a big portion of the population has, but never notices because it's not a problem with their usage pattern.
I'm starting to get increasingly annoyed by these general health advisories that are revised every couple of years, when people realize that once it's applied to the wrong part of the population it does more harm than good.
The post you're replying to says "A condition a big portion of the population has, but never notices", so the relevant people won't know they have it or know any such limitations.
That actual number is expected to be a lot higher. The number you're talking about is people that had issues and were diagnosed with it, the associated ICD9 is usually what is used in those statistics. Not too mention a significant number of normal doctors and older orthopedic surgeons never test for it, nor know how to test even though the test itself is very simple. Basically, a lot of intense sports, especially contact sports trigger the pain associated with it. But if you don't do those you'll never have symptoms, which is why the medical decision is mostly divided into two camps.
One of them thinks it's a genetic condition that always needs to be corrected or addressed and the other believes that most of people have it without ever exhibiting symptoms because, as I said earlier, their usage pattern never triggers any symptom.
The others don't notice anything, so that's not "a big portion" at all.
If it was a high % they would be tested by default. Eg. Like the heart is tested when you do sports ( eg. Soccer) on a competitive level.
People who suddenly train intense are always suggested to see a doctor if it's not too sudden and to have a check-up. The responsibility is to the person who is training intensely, not the one who is giving the exercises in a certain niche.
Sharing information is fine, but I don't see any reason to complain and get annoyed. Is there any medical advice that is universally applicable? Should we all get annoyed at all medical advice and health education?
On the subject of what position we should take all day while working. Someone says sit in a chair, but some conditions are aggrivated by long periods of sitting, such as those who have a femoroacetabular impingement. Someone else says stand, that hurts some people's backs. Someone says walk, not everyone can walk though, so now I'm annoyed too. Someone says lay down, but not everyone has a fancy lay down desk setup, I'm triggered.
Perhaps more vague "check with your doctor" disclaimers are the solution?
I have become so jaded that it is hard to read stories like this without thinking someone is trying to sell me something.
My preference in bicycles being standard road bikes makes me guess my preference is not common. It also makes me question how much of this is tangled in the placebo effect. Notably, I am not claiming there is no effect. Just that the agent isn't what we modified.
Doesn't sound that good for the back IMO, as someone who can squat indefinitely it's not that comfortable leaning forwards like I do on a desk. You end up hunching up even more, and your knees are just in the way of your arms.
Kneeling is pain though. I'd rather sit cross legged than kneel for any length of time. A cross legged desk would work, as well. It would just be about a foot high.
You could probably use a low Japanese table for this pretty well.
I think a combination of positions is probably best to get variety in muscles you're using. Reminds me of a theory I heard that hard-backed chairs are actually better because they make you fidget and readjust your body, versus using the soft chair as an external spine
Adjustable tables would solve that problem. I have one and it’s brilliant, days when I’m feeling lazy I can sit at it but days when I need better focus I can press a button and it turns a motor on to raise the desk.
It doesn’t go low enough to squat though. I doubt many would.
An adjustable desk that goes low enough to kneel in front of it would be interesting.
It would be quite difficult mechanically however. In a normal adjustable desk you only go from 1x to 1.5x height, which is trivial. With a table you can use while kneeling you would need to go to 2x height to sit in front of it or to 3x height to use it standing, all while maintaining the stability we expect from a table.
Mine more than doubles in height and does so using a 3 part telescopic legs. Given how small some telescopic ladders can compress to and how low my desk already goes with just 3 parts, I’m reasonably confident it’s not that difficult of an engineering challenge to build a table that could compress lower than mine.
I've toggled between squatting and cross-legged (half-lotus) sitting for about 4-5 years when I work from home. I think it helps really well to reduce tension or pain in the lower back. Squatting is not all that comfortable for typing, though.
I would say easily adjustable sitting/standing desks that are also on wheels is the future. I want to be able to rest my arms on the desk and pull it around with my within a few foot area so i don't need to stand statically all day because that's just as bad for you.
I doubt that. If you're in an ATG squat, I think your desk height would need to be below your (squatted) knee height - probably well below it. I'm about 9 cm taller than dgan and doing a quick test I think a desk height of even 17 inches (43 cm) would put my arms and shoulders in an uncomfortably raised position, so realistically I'd need the desk height to be about 5-7 inches (13-18 cm) above the surface my feet are on.
I'm a similar height and regularly kneel in getting of my desk or on a chair in front of my standing desk. I learnt it in school where the desks were all to small for me.
They are great for the spine! U can do so many small stirs and rolls while you're working. I rotate bt several chairs and standing throughout the day, including a big blue ball. I would like to get one of those chairs with a halfball, too.
Knee ligaments are their strongest at full flexion or full extension, they've evolved to be able to support us standing and squatting.
Non-acute knee problems are often found in people who are unable to do this type of squat, as limitations in ankle and hip flexibility (often combined with weakness in these parts) puts a large(r) strain on the knees.
In a proper deep squat, your thighs and calves are touching and your feet are flat on the floor, so there's not a lot of stress on the tendons. It's a surprisingly relaxing position, but a lot of people can't do it, because they haven't really squatted since they were toddlers. It takes time to get that flexibility back, not least because a lot of people seem to think that squatting below 90 degrees is bad for your knees.
I've been doing weightlifting for many years, and I can do a full squat with my feet and knees together, which I certainly could not do when I started. Keeping flexible only gets more important as you age.
It's not for flexibility that I can't get into a deep squat. It's because my belly and thighs don't let me compress far enough to be in a balanced position when I do. I end up being back-heavy and toppling over!
I'm working on the weight factor generally (down 30lbs this year!), but is there an adaptive way I can add this into my day to be slightly more active and receive the health benefits? Or do I just have to wait a bit?
If I squatted with my feet on a slight incline, that would tilt me forward enough not to fall backward, but would it start straining all the wrong places?
Weight lifters often wear shoes with a definite incline while squatting, so do not worry about that (though my guess is it will not solve the basic problem you described).
I think a good progression for people that cannot do it properly right away is to have something steady in front of you that you can hold with both (or one) arms and allows you to keep the position for longer periods, until your joints, muscles and tendons start adapting.
This is the way I’ve seen different people with different limitations continually make progress until they can do it properly.
It helps to widen your stance. This brings your knees and thighs outwards to make room for your stomach.
As for being back heavy, squat shoes are commonly used in weightlifting and they have an incline built into them. If you don't want to buy squat shoes you can always put a block of wood or something that's about an inch or so under the back of your foot to give you an incline. This helps you get deeper.
Like the other comment mentioned, you can widen your stance, so your belly goes between your thighs. An Indian-style squat with the thighs touching the calves already is a wide(ish) stance and puts the torso sort of between the thighs, so you adjust a bit based on that, depending on how much room you need.
Look at how a toddler squats, that's basically it.
And kudos on your weight loss already! Squats are for everyone, really. It's one of those ways our bodies can naturally be more flexible than we might think. Now, if you have issues getting back up from a full squat, you may need a helper or a handhold like the edge of a table, at least in the beginning, and that's fine. I can't do one-legged squats (pistols) without stabilization, I just can't.
I can't do it either. The image in the article shows a man doing it though. His arms are extended in the forward direction, perhaps for counterbalance. Maybe holding some weights could provide more counterbalance. A different way might be to hold someone else's arms who is doing the same exercise in front of you.
It's a question of ankle mobility, a lot of people have very tight Achilles tendons and can't do it without a lot of stretching, flexibility exercises and practice.
Depending on how close you are to being able to squat with flat feet, you can put books or something under your heels.
"Lift with your legs" is advice to avoid hurting yourself when you are lifting something for the sake of actually moving it. It's not an exercise plan.
When exercising, you want to lift with your back specifically to strengthen the muscles involved. The lift they're describing is basically a deadlift, which is one of the key lifts involved a typical weightlifting plan (lifting with your legs in another one, so don't skip that).
You do have to be careful not to try to lift too much weight to avoid injuring yourself, but as long as you don't overdo it, you will reduce your risk of back injury because your muscles will be stronger and less easily injured.
That's not what the article is advocating at all. A table bend is basically a deadlift. It's all about keeping the back straight so the heavy lifting is done by the hips and legs.
> "Now put your hand right there, on your fig leaf. When you bend, you want to let this fig leaf — your pubic bone — move through your legs. It moves down and back."
Let’s just say men are given a much more succinct set of directions in a weightlifting gym.
When I passed 40 I started to get regular lower back muscle pain when sitting or standing for some time. I understand that hamstrings tend to shorten with age and pull on the back muscles, which can irritate the muscles and tendons there. Standard advice is to do hamstring streches. This is a form of torture as far as I'm concerned, I prefer lower back pain.
Somewhere I came across the idea that squatting could help. I started to squat instead of bending over or kneeling whenever I needed to gather up something or do some work at ground level, just a few seconds or minutes at a time. It took a few weeks before I could so comforably. The ankles and hips needed some time to adapt.
The lower back pain mostly went away over a few months. This was probably had the highest benefit to effort ratio of any health improvement project I've done.
If it hurts that much to stretch your hamstrings you're already very out of shape. You have other things to worry about as well. Pursue a fitness program, not just squatting.
This is an unfounded and unhelpful generalisation. I’m nothing close to what people would consider “very out of shape”. Yet hamstring stretches are something I definitely do not enjoy doing but force myself to do through necessity. They’re the first thing I’ll skip if motivation is waning precisely because of the discomfort. I find almost all other stretches to be at least someone endorphin producing and worth the stretch. Hamstrings are pure discomfort.
Squatting may have helped because a squat tends to stretch the hamstrings along with all the other muscles down there. It's both a nice stretch and a great exercise.
I like to squat when interacting with toddlers as they are less afraid of someone their height and the act of squatting reminds me of when I played catcher as a young man.
I used to teach a Japanese martial art which involves a lot of sitting in seiza [1] and tatehiza. Basically kneeling and advanced kneeling. It was mind boggling how many adults were unable to do it. And I don't mean kneeling for half an hour. I mean just kneeling, period. So many people can't do it. Weak legs and inflexible ankles seemed to be the main culprits. They improved with practice, so it's not like there's some deeply fundamental anatomical flaw at work. Many people just spend way too much time sitting in chairs, to the detriment of everything else.
Someone once told me: "the most ergonomic position, is the next position".
> "the most ergonomic position, is the next position"
A valuable insight. No single position is perfectly ergonomic; Shifting one's pose as the body requires it loadbalances stress and maintains bloodflow.
The education/employment complex places way too much emphasis on sitting still (in a chair).
I would like to get better at kneeling in this position for prolonged periods of time for canoeing purposes, do you have any suggestions? Is there a range of movements that help or is really just a matter of practicing kneeling in that position.
Per the linked Wikipedia article, "experienced" practicioners can maintain the stance for ~40 minutes. While pop culture can make it appear like a traditional equivalent to sitting in a chair it's really not meant for prolonged use
40 minutes? I can go hours. Squeezing your toes every once in a while and/or subtly shifting weight makes really long sittings more bearable. It's not as comfortable as sitting cross legged ("criss cross applesauce", according to some), but it's OK. It's my go-to position for many seated tasks, including typing this comment.
I recently began seeing a personal trainer, and he got me to start using this heart rate/calorie burning tracker. I've always felt that kneeling and squatting is good for you, so I tested it out about a month ago.
I spent a couple of hours cleaning my apartment with the tracker on, consciously deciding to kneel and squat whenever I could. Not only did it make the cleaning feel more enjoyable, it burned way more calories than I expected.
Not sure a group of people whose lifestyle is about as different as could be from the typical office worker is the right control group to use to claim the benefits of squatting
Given a human body B, how many permutations of a position P can you move the body into, given the time constraint of a day D?
I had back pain from "programmer's hunch." I resisted doing yoga because I thought I was too cool to do "hippie stuff," but I started doing yoga and my back pain went away. Is my spirit cleansed from opening my spinal chakra? No. My yoga routine includes many body positions I never enter during a typical day, most importantly lordosis.[0] The first time I did the lordosis pose my back crackled and popped. The second time not so much. These days I gracefully enter the pose with ease, and my back pain has magically disappeared.
Sorry, I mean no offense. Where I live I have met many yoga practitioners who have peculiar ideas about physiology. They do not represent yoga as a whole, or its traditional practice.
I’m very familiar with this yogababble. It’s a real shame, because it drives away the people who could benefit most from the practice. I would really enjoy a more mechanical yoga practice without it.
Mate yoga is the original spiritual practice from India. It was created as a tool to explore and deepen spirituality.
Reducing it to "just some stretches" is a western invention. Which is fine! But chakras and all that "hippie woo" is much closer to "true yoga" than the sanitised version you're talking about.
I second the earlier comment that the best posture is your next posture. The problem has always been shifts interrupt work so they just don't happen often enough. We are working on something along these lines to support more frequent useful movement without interrupting your work with a smart interactive chair. Have a handful of prototypes out and looking for early beta users in Bay Area, NYC and Boston. We can do a quick online demo and if of interest offer a week long test trial- https://movably.typeform.com/to/Nyo8603J
Squatting with weights is one of the most beneficial exercises you can do that targets a lot of muscle mass, is trainable with incremental weight addition and gives a large range of motion for the muscle groups involved. If you're going to be doing only one weightlifting exercise in the gym, make it a squat.
Absolutely, and if you only do two, add deadlifting.
For the third mandatory exercise, I would add a body weight exercise, namely burpees, ideally strict pushup burpees. Great cardio and activation of the upper body in addition to the legs, plus explosiveness.
These western parasites will sell our own stuff back to us after waving fancy words. These are superficial cultures that invented the modern toilet and dumped crap into rivers for the last 400 years.
Now there is another article using the word gothra, without a shred of cross-cultural comparison ? I thought these Harvard Graduates studied in humanities
Moses for all his bravado in freeing the jews, made up the one true god so that he and his family could monopolize access to the MLM scheme called religion.
Hindus should completely abandon the words G-d and religion to describe their beliefs. Hindus worship spirits of fallen ancestors and nature spirits. Hindus follow "the right path".
P*edos legs will be hacked off according to Hindu law. Thats absolutely just. So that means even Stalin's legs would be hacked off. Hinduism does not promote genetic mixing with barbaric child raping cultures be it roman, jew, arab or turk. They will always remain untouchable filth.
94 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadI'm starting to get increasingly annoyed by these general health advisories that are revised every couple of years, when people realize that once it's applied to the wrong part of the population it does more harm than good.
You won't bake apple pie when you're allergic to apples from the daily newspaper menu.
Is that a big portion / a good example?
One of them thinks it's a genetic condition that always needs to be corrected or addressed and the other believes that most of people have it without ever exhibiting symptoms because, as I said earlier, their usage pattern never triggers any symptom.
The others don't notice anything, so that's not "a big portion" at all.
If it was a high % they would be tested by default. Eg. Like the heart is tested when you do sports ( eg. Soccer) on a competitive level.
People who suddenly train intense are always suggested to see a doctor if it's not too sudden and to have a check-up. The responsibility is to the person who is training intensely, not the one who is giving the exercises in a certain niche.
On the subject of what position we should take all day while working. Someone says sit in a chair, but some conditions are aggrivated by long periods of sitting, such as those who have a femoroacetabular impingement. Someone else says stand, that hurts some people's backs. Someone says walk, not everyone can walk though, so now I'm annoyed too. Someone says lay down, but not everyone has a fancy lay down desk setup, I'm triggered.
Perhaps more vague "check with your doctor" disclaimers are the solution?
My preference in bicycles being standard road bikes makes me guess my preference is not common. It also makes me question how much of this is tangled in the placebo effect. Notably, I am not claiming there is no effect. Just that the agent isn't what we modified.
Time for the kneeling/squatting desks. Now that's a conversation.
Any startups working on this already?
Kneeling is pain though. I'd rather sit cross legged than kneel for any length of time. A cross legged desk would work, as well. It would just be about a foot high.
I think a combination of positions is probably best to get variety in muscles you're using. Reminds me of a theory I heard that hard-backed chairs are actually better because they make you fidget and readjust your body, versus using the soft chair as an external spine
It doesn’t go low enough to squat though. I doubt many would.
It would be quite difficult mechanically however. In a normal adjustable desk you only go from 1x to 1.5x height, which is trivial. With a table you can use while kneeling you would need to go to 2x height to sit in front of it or to 3x height to use it standing, all while maintaining the stability we expect from a table.
I've toggled between squatting and cross-legged (half-lotus) sitting for about 4-5 years when I work from home. I think it helps really well to reduce tension or pain in the lower back. Squatting is not all that comfortable for typing, though.
Seems like the most important thing to do is spend less time at the office.
It feels more comfortable than just sitting normally. I am quite a tall person (192cm) so hypothetized that's the reason I prefer it
Not sure if health benefit is real
Edit: as noted by KozmoNau7 in another comment, "In a proper deep squat, your thighs and calves are touching and your feet are flat on the floor"
Non-acute knee problems are often found in people who are unable to do this type of squat, as limitations in ankle and hip flexibility (often combined with weakness in these parts) puts a large(r) strain on the knees.
I've been doing weightlifting for many years, and I can do a full squat with my feet and knees together, which I certainly could not do when I started. Keeping flexible only gets more important as you age.
It's not for flexibility that I can't get into a deep squat. It's because my belly and thighs don't let me compress far enough to be in a balanced position when I do. I end up being back-heavy and toppling over!
I'm working on the weight factor generally (down 30lbs this year!), but is there an adaptive way I can add this into my day to be slightly more active and receive the health benefits? Or do I just have to wait a bit?
If I squatted with my feet on a slight incline, that would tilt me forward enough not to fall backward, but would it start straining all the wrong places?
Weight lifters often wear shoes with a definite incline while squatting, so do not worry about that (though my guess is it will not solve the basic problem you described).
This is the way I’ve seen different people with different limitations continually make progress until they can do it properly.
As for being back heavy, squat shoes are commonly used in weightlifting and they have an incline built into them. If you don't want to buy squat shoes you can always put a block of wood or something that's about an inch or so under the back of your foot to give you an incline. This helps you get deeper.
Look at how a toddler squats, that's basically it.
And kudos on your weight loss already! Squats are for everyone, really. It's one of those ways our bodies can naturally be more flexible than we might think. Now, if you have issues getting back up from a full squat, you may need a helper or a handhold like the edge of a table, at least in the beginning, and that's fine. I can't do one-legged squats (pistols) without stabilization, I just can't.
This is the most basic position people use in India during sitting and eating food.
Follow up this one with the lotus pose, as it automatically stretches your back and leg muscles.
By that time, it may make it easier for you to squat.
Depending on how close you are to being able to squat with flat feet, you can put books or something under your heels.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/02/26/5877352...
When exercising, you want to lift with your back specifically to strengthen the muscles involved. The lift they're describing is basically a deadlift, which is one of the key lifts involved a typical weightlifting plan (lifting with your legs in another one, so don't skip that).
You do have to be careful not to try to lift too much weight to avoid injuring yourself, but as long as you don't overdo it, you will reduce your risk of back injury because your muscles will be stronger and less easily injured.
Let’s just say men are given a much more succinct set of directions in a weightlifting gym.
Somewhere I came across the idea that squatting could help. I started to squat instead of bending over or kneeling whenever I needed to gather up something or do some work at ground level, just a few seconds or minutes at a time. It took a few weeks before I could so comforably. The ankles and hips needed some time to adapt.
The lower back pain mostly went away over a few months. This was probably had the highest benefit to effort ratio of any health improvement project I've done.
Someone once told me: "the most ergonomic position, is the next position".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiza
Yup, similarly "the only bad position is the one you're in for too long"
A valuable insight. No single position is perfectly ergonomic; Shifting one's pose as the body requires it loadbalances stress and maintains bloodflow.
The education/employment complex places way too much emphasis on sitting still (in a chair).
I spent a couple of hours cleaning my apartment with the tracker on, consciously deciding to kneel and squat whenever I could. Not only did it make the cleaning feel more enjoyable, it burned way more calories than I expected.
I had back pain from "programmer's hunch." I resisted doing yoga because I thought I was too cool to do "hippie stuff," but I started doing yoga and my back pain went away. Is my spirit cleansed from opening my spinal chakra? No. My yoga routine includes many body positions I never enter during a typical day, most importantly lordosis.[0] The first time I did the lordosis pose my back crackled and popped. The second time not so much. These days I gracefully enter the pose with ease, and my back pain has magically disappeared.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lordosis
Btw, there is no notion of a spirit cleansing in yoga. This is all hippie marketing.
For the third mandatory exercise, I would add a body weight exercise, namely burpees, ideally strict pushup burpees. Great cardio and activation of the upper body in addition to the legs, plus explosiveness.
Now there is another article using the word gothra, without a shred of cross-cultural comparison ? I thought these Harvard Graduates studied in humanities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levite
Moses for all his bravado in freeing the jews, made up the one true god so that he and his family could monopolize access to the MLM scheme called religion.
Hindus should completely abandon the words G-d and religion to describe their beliefs. Hindus worship spirits of fallen ancestors and nature spirits. Hindus follow "the right path".
P*edos legs will be hacked off according to Hindu law. Thats absolutely just. So that means even Stalin's legs would be hacked off. Hinduism does not promote genetic mixing with barbaric child raping cultures be it roman, jew, arab or turk. They will always remain untouchable filth.
W.B. Yeats, "The Municipal Gallery Revisited"