For bodies that sit nine hours and train anyway
Recovery advice for
people who sit too much.
Most of what gets sold for a sore back doesn't survive contact with the research. I read the studies, use what I can afford, and write down the difference. A fair amount of what ends up mattering costs nothing.
12 articles One writer No sponsored posts
Recent
The last few
Where knee pain shows up when you squat, and what it suggests
The spot that hurts during a squat narrows the possibilities. Front, inside, outside and behind the knee, plus which part of your setup to change first.
Neck pain from desk work, and the fifteen minutes I'd spend on it
Most desk-neck advice aims at posture. The evidence points somewhere less photogenic. What to do at 3pm, and the three setup changes worth making.
The first three days of a bad back
Bed rest is the wrong instinct and it has been for thirty years. What the guidelines recommend for acute low back pain, and the symptoms that mean you stop reading.
A morning routine for plantar heel pain that starts before you stand up
The sharp stab on your first step out of bed usually settles with loading rather than rest. What to change in the first hour, and how long it tends to take.
Why your tight hip flexors survive three years of stretching
The front of your hip can feel tight without being short. What the sensation is measuring, and what to train instead of stretching it again.
How to read a massage gun spec sheet
Two numbers decide whether a percussion device works, and most listings publish neither. What amplitude and stall force mean, what the evidence supports, and where not to point the thing.
Sections
Three ways to read this site
Recovery Gear
Massage guns, red light panels, foam rollers, compression boots. Mostly I argue about what the specifications mean and whether the thing is worth owning at all.
Enter 02Fix the Pain
Neck, low back, feet, hips, knees. Organised by the part that hurts, because that is how people search at 2am.
Enter 03Routines
Ten minutes you can do in work clothes, beside a desk, without a mat. Written for Tuesdays rather than for Instagram.
EnterWhere I draw the line
Health writing mostly runs on
things nobody checked.
I'm one person with a laptop and a library card, not a clinic. That limits what I can say, and the limit is worth being explicit about.
Who writes this- 01
No cure language
Tools manage symptoms. I can describe a routine that helps you feel better. I can't tell you it fixed anything.
- 02
Commission never sets the order
The foam roller article recommends a $25 roller. Foam rollers pay almost nothing.
- 03
No borrowed authority
There is no medical reviewer on this site, because I couldn't get one to sign off on a blog. Inventing one would be worse.
- 04
You get the caveats
Where the evidence is thin I say so in the sentence, not in a disclaimer at the bottom.
If you're here because something hurts
Start with the stuff that
costs nothing.
Nine times out of ten the useful advice is a wall, a floor, and a timer. Buy the gear later, once you know the free version didn't solve it.