3 exercises that have massively improved my health as a software engineer

by Hank Lin

If you are a software engineer like me, you may have experienced the negative health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. Even if you are a weekend warrior, you are still negatively impacting your body over 8 hours a day if you do not take a proactive approach to mitigate the harm that sitting for long periods of time is doing to your body. I've experienced RSI (repetitive stress injury) in my wrists/fingers, lower back pain/stiffness, plantar fasciitis, and knee pain. I've tried a lot of different physical therapy approaches, from conventional PT exercises, to trigger point massage relief, all had temporary relief but no long term success.

There was a time where I had given up in finding the answer and was ready to accept living with pain for the rest of my life when my PT friend introduced me to the McKenzie method. That moment changed my life. I immediately got the available book from Amazon and read it cover to cover in 5 hours. This book may change yours too.

The most important content of the book is understanding the concept that the reason sedentary lifestyle is so bad for our bodies, is because it trains our body to specialize in maintaining muscle, joint, tendon positions in that specific position. A healthy body is meant to move so if your muscles, joints, and tendons specialize in being in one position for too long, anytime you move outside of that, your body would react like it doesn't know how to work in those ranges properly. After doing McKenzie method exercises to significantly reduce my pain and problem areas, I then experimented with traditional calisthenic exercises and modified them to incorporate McKenzie method philosophies. Below are the listed exercises with a couple photos  that demonstrate how to perform them with some minor detail.

  • Squat into a ball position. I have not seen a name for this on the internet so I'll just refer to this as a curling squat. I had my friend help me take these photos after my jiu-jitsu class today at Ronin Athletics. I recommend doing this exercise ten times.
Starting position make sure to exhale before starting the movement

Breathe in, squat down as deep as you can, curl your neck and back as much as possible. Try to work towards being able to touch your butt to your heel and don't let your heel raise off the floor. You're working your ankle, back, neck, knee flexibility all in one motion. Pause here for a couple seconds and then come back up from the starting position. That is one rep.
  • After doing the previous exercise of the curling squat ten times, you've effectively loosened up your lower and upper back, stretched a portion of your quads that get stretched during knee flexion and somewhat stretched your calves and increased your ankle's range of motion. However, you cannot leave your lower and upper back in a curled state, they need to resume their well supported arch so that is why I follow it up with the next exercise. Hindu push up with pause in middle. I posted a video that demonstrates the Hindu pushup very well. Just make sure you emphasize pausing in the middle to emphasize the arch in the lower and upper back, and also stretch your psoas muscles. I recommend doing this for ten reps.
  • Wrist and finger curling and expanding slow motion. Done for ten reps.
Start in a position demonstrated in the image shown on the left, try to stretch your fingers back and bend your wrist back as far as it can go. Then slowly curl your fingers to make a tight fist and bend the wrist the other way and go as far as it can go in that direction. This is one rep.

Keep in mind, that even though the squat and Hindu push ups look like they are working your strength, they are actually working the full range of multiple body parts all at once if done the way I show.

I do these exercises as often as possible but at the very least once every two hours while I am at work. I go to an isolated area away from view and do ten curling squats, ten Hindu pushups with a pause in the middle, and ten wrist and finger curling and expanding motions. I hope if you give these a try that you feel the toll of the sedentary lifestyle and the seated position begin to melt away and feel your posture change for the better and overall pain and range of motion in your joints improve like I have experienced.