Stretch!

We all know we are sedentary—we must think about the health issues involved in our work. If we are being health conscious we take breaks, and perhaps, even go out for a brief walk; however, to really address some of the issues of our sedentary life, we need to look at areas of our bodies that are particularly stressed—hands and forearms with extensive mouse use, or neck and shoulder muscles if it’s been a particularly hard day. In addition to that quick break, we should spend the time to assess our body’s messages and do something to address those specific areas.

Even though I might think I’m doing as much ergonomically as possible, there are days when I walk away from my computer with aches and pains that are not my usual. First I need to assess my workday and try to discover why I’m feeling unusual stress.

It might be something as simple as that the text I’m displaying on my second monitor had to be unusually small in order to display correct formatting.  Perhaps to compensate for that I’ve been sitting in a slightly different position, maybe leaning toward that monitor enough to cause a new group of muscles to react to a new strain.  Maybe it will be gone in the morning, but if I’m still working on the same project, I might repeat that same strain again. We need to remember that it’s repetitive stress that causes injury.

The most obvious first step is to try to eliminate the cause, but we really need to go further—to specifically address muscle groups that are tight.  You have a headache, so you take an analgesic; if you have tight muscles, do something to relieve that problem; don’t ignore it.

When we get up and walk away from the computer for a few minutes most of us go get a drink, run to the kitchen to start dinner, or maybe do a little dusting.  We don’t actively address the muscles that are tight.  Advice from the WebMD archives: “If your posture or activities are a problem, make it a habit to stretch those muscles regularly. If you have back pain from sitting at a desk all day, stretches that reverse that posture could help.”  There’s a simple back-muscle stretch at the site from which we all could likely benefit at the end of the day.

Should we all be doing yoga exercises?  Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt.  We certainly don’t need to go for the extreme poses, but there are some simple things (Yoga for the Indexer) we can do.  Most of us are not likely to do a full workout at the end of our workday so we need to take a few minutes to do a body assessment—are the neck muscles tight? Jaws?  Shoulders?  Then we should do some gentle stretches focusing on those specific muscle groups (even if you’ve done a workout earlier in the day).  After all, you don’t tolerate a headache—you do something about it.  Treat the rest of your body the same.

Many online resources focus on total body stretching.  What we need here is stretching focused on muscle groups where we feel our tension, when we feel that tension.  I’m fortunate that the break-timer software that I use supplies stretching exercises for specific areas, and I can customize to fit what stretches I need to do to prevent or recover from the odd position I might have used while reading very small font on my second monitor.

Hands and forearms are often sites of tension because of mouse and keyboard use.  From Harvard RSI Prevention we have the “prayer stretch” for hands and forearms (it’s diagrammed in the article), Harvard also provides other tips for prevention of RSI.

For other areas that need stretching, you can find focused stretches for hands and arms as well as shoulders.  Despite our best efforts we often tend to sit leaning forward which can affect nerves in the thoracic area.  More focused stretches for the neck, back, and shoulders are useful (scroll all the way to the bottom of the article).

While you’re sitting there contemplating the next blog entry, do some ankle pumps and circles.