The two minutes I do before I get out of bed

Move it Monday

My back is at its worst in the first ten minutes of the day, and that is when I used to do the least about it.

You know the pattern. Waking stiff. Getting up carefully, holding the edge of something. The shuffle to the kitchen… and then by nine you are moving fine and have forgotten the whole business until the next morning.

So the useful two minutes are the ones before you stand up. Not after.

Today is the simplest thing in this newsletter. You do it lying down, it costs nothing, and you can do it with your eyes shut.

The move

Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the bed. Arms out to the sides, palms down, or wherever they sit comfortably.

Let both knees fall slowly over to the right. Only as far as they want to go. Your left shoulder stays down on the bed.

Hold there for one breath. Bring them back up through the middle. Then let them go the other way.

Slow. Ten each way. It should feel like a gentle wringing out… not a stretch you have to brace against.

Then, when you do get up, roll onto your side first and push up with your arm instead of folding at the waist.

What I am not going to claim

I cannot tell you that this move beats some other move. Nobody can.

That is the honest state of the evidence for ordinary back pain. Trials that set one kind of exercise against another keep coming back close to even.

What does hold up is moving rather than not moving.

So I did not pick this one because it wins. I picked it because it is the one you can manage before you are properly awake, in the dark, without getting dressed. The best exercise for your back is the one that actually happens.

Why the first ten minutes

The usual explanation is the dull one. Everything back there has been still for seven hours, and you are asking it to hold you upright in one go.

Whatever the mechanism, the pattern is the useful part, because it tells you when to spend your two minutes. Not at noon when your back feels fine. At six, when it does not.

And there is a second reason to do it lying down. A back that has not taken any weight yet is a back you cannot easily overdo. You have no leverage in that position, which is just what you want before the day starts.

So the bar is deliberately low. Two minutes, no shoes, no floor, nothing to set up… and if you do nothing else all day for your back, you have still done something.

Anyway, I do mine while the coffee machine warms up two rooms away. The whole thing is over before it finishes.

And if your back is in a bad spell right now, do fewer and go slower. Nothing here is a test.

Here is to an easier first ten minutes,
Walt