Body in Motion

Last week, during my code sprint to release version 4 of my home grown blogging engine, I seem to have upset my upper back. Most likely this pain can be attributed to poor posture while sitting in front of the computer (which I was doing for 10 hours+ at the time). You know the pose; lower back out, shoulders up and rolled forward and head down.

The result of neglecting my body is sharp shooting pains whenever I look down. I’ve felt this pain before, usually from “sleeping wrong” or something like that. Historically, pain in my upper back or neck tends to alleviate itself in about 2-3 days.

Unfortunately, this time it seems as if I’ve aggravated my back more than usual. So much so that I went to the doctor just to make sure that there wasn’t another underlying cause other than poor posture. After a standard exam testing my range of motion, the doc sent me on my way with a new prescription in hand; Cyclobenzaprine.

Now I’ve never taken muscle relaxers before and when I first looked at the dosage I was a little disappointed. At 10mg, I thought this isn’t going to do much. Boy was I ever wrong. He might as well have given me voodoo zombie stuff because that’s what I turned into for two days; a walking zombie. Naturally, pain relievers and the like only target the symptom and not the cause.

With that in mind, I’ve started becoming more aware of my posture both at home and at work and correcting it when I notice myself regressing to my old habits. I’ve also been stretching more so that my range of motion isn’t as limited throughout the day.

A few years back, I was taking a Tae Kwon Do class and I enjoyed the warm up before the actual class started. Taking my previous experience with me I’ve turned to Sang H. Kim’s DVD Ultimate Flexibility: Stretching for Martial Arts which I try to do for daily stretching.

The workouts are separated into Easy, Moderate, and Intense with each one lasting approximately 20 minutes. I’ve done both the Easy and Moderate workouts and I’ve been extremely happy with the routines in each.

Dear GF, who has done the Easy workout with me, remarked that some of the techniques used in the DVD borrow heavily from yoga. I’ve been interested in yoga for a long time, especially after reading Mark Verstegen’s Core Performance books which borrow extensively from yoga (in fact, I’d say that a lot of it is yoga).

To get basic comprehension on the subject, I picked up Sage Rountree’s the Athlete’s Guide to Yoga (which now has a companion DVD) and I’ve been reading it from time to time. From what I’ve read, I’m been really pleased with the format and text of the book.

Hopefully with a pairing of martial arts stretching and yoga, I can avoid injuring myself even when it’s just sitting at the computer.