Managing Aches & Pains

Stretches to Relieve Your Tight Office Back

By Danny Wallis Personal Trainer & Online Fitness Coach

April 19, 2015

If you have been following my blog you may have come across the term ‘office back’ which I use to refer to postural discomfort and pain which can occur in the back, shoulders, hips and even the knees caused by long periods of sitting down.

‘An Introduction to Office Back’ introduced the how and why prolonged use of your chair is damaging your back and ‘How to Fix Your Sore Office Back Part 1: Making Muscle Tension a Thing of The Past’ showed you how to reduce tension in your body using a foam roll and tennis ball.

Today’s post follows this particular collection of articles – So, by now you have some insight as to why your back may be sore and, hopefully, have started to take the tension away using the foam roll exercises… We now move forward to begin to stretch the muscles to release the muscles which are responsible for your discomfort in the first place.

Flexibility is Key

By this stage of the process, your level of flexibility is key. Tight muscles will restrict your joints natural range of movement and this causes an increased stress on the muscles as they cannot then function properly. Imagine a rusty foot pump… There you are trying to blow up your air bed, however, the air which is coming out of the pump is restricted because the piston on the pump has corroded and not going up & down properly. Blowing up your air bed ends up taking all night compared to a shiny new foot pump which moves freely and is well lubricated.

Muscles work in a similar way. If your range of movement around a joint is limited so is the power output from your muscles which control that joint. This causes both weakness and tightness in the muscles which can affect your performance, posture and your basic everyday movements.

Follow this stretch routine to begin relieving stress pain in your back, hips, knees and shoulders.

 stretches-to-relieve-office-back

I would love to know how you find this programme and it would be good to know what your routine is to! Leave your comments below and don’t forget to subscribe via email for regular updates to my latest posts.

Happy stretching!

About the author

Danny Wallis is a Personal Trainer, Sports Therapist, NLP Life Coach and Nutrition Advisor, with over 20 years experience in helping people achieve their goals.

Danny Wallis

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