When various aches and pains arise it can be hard to know when to move away from google and seek professional advice. One of the common strategies we find patients use to self-treat their pain is to stretch the area that is painful. It is easy to find advice online with “5 best neck stretches” or “how to treat your hip pain at home”. As with all general advice, sometimes this is helpful and other times frustrating. Whether or not it’s helpful often depends on the cause of the pain. A common mistake is stretching pain that is coming from the nerve and not the muscle.

While most of the time we focus this blog on moving with good quality during fitness, it is also important to be sitting well. Poor sitting posture commonly leads to aches and pains that present themselves on a run, in fitness class, at the gym and in managing our homes. With an increased number of people working from home, navigating new work spaces and poorly fitting furniture, now is a great time to assess your sitting posture and make improvements for joint health. Today we will discuss a few of these sitting patterns that lead to movement pains, review why they matter, and postulate why they are happening.