Tim Wilson
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Mike Cohen] “1 – Drink a lot – of water that is.”
Very wise to put this at #1, Mike. I agree.
re: DRW and the Aeron – a great place to start. The cool thing is that they were de rigeur in corporate life for quite a while. You used to be able to pick them up on eBay for a couple of hundred bucks. People are getting back to work (yes, really), so those deals aren’t as common…but still worth a look.
Note that you’ll find a wide range of prices. That’s because Herman Miller put out a couple of different versions, at different price points. Even the “bottom” of the line ($600-ish) is wonderful. Do check around.
The one I went with is the Humanscale Freedom chair. Rather than coming from the world of office furniture like Herman Miller (although REAL Herman Miller is hardly what you think of when you say “office furniture” – I don’t have anything that nice in my house…besides the bed…), Humanscale comes from the world of ergonomic accessories.
The idea of “Freedom” includes freedom from the kind of careful set-up that most good office chairs require….but the big one for me is that it readjusts itself automatically as you fidget. As soon as I tried it, I realized that a big part of what hurt my back in other chairs is that the chair was forcing me to be as rigid as the chair!! Not good.
Anyway, the Aeron was the chair that sparked a revolution. The Freedom is 2.0. (Leap is another company that has done great things in the second generation.) If you look around, you’ll see that we’re well into the THIRD generation of ergonomic chair design. As is the way with such things, plenty of folks like me and DRW who are plenty happy with the first 2 generations. 🙂
If you have a serious office furniture store nearby (most definitely NOT Office Depot, Staples, Walmart, etc.), it’s worth spending a little time trying some stuff out. That’s how I chose the Freedom.
Drink lots of water before you go, and when you come back. 🙂
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Speedy follow-ups:
1) re: the bed. Seriously man. Do it.
2) Our household income was maybe $30K when we invested in the expensive chair and bed. When my wife broke her back, she was a student on a teaching fellowship. I was teaching pre-school. Hence my feeling that there are no excuses for investing in your back.
3) You might THINK you need firm mattress because it is what has worked so far, but that’s likely because it’s the only thing in a certain price range that worked. As you move up, you can be a little more thoughtful. We were SHOCKED at how much better a softer mattress worked as you move up the product line.
Think of it this way. A jeep is fine when you’re in your twenties, but it turns out that a luxury car in your 20s is also nice. When you get older, a luxury car is REALLY nice. When you’ve hurt your back, it’s essential. And since we’re talking about mattresses not cars, it’s an investment in the rest of your life.
4) I’m neither touchy nor feely. In the rest of my life, I’m a shark. A really vicious one. I’m not even very nice.
Still, the vegetarian thing has worked beyond my wildest dreams. I had absolutely no idea how much better I’d feel. And trust me, I’m all about how I feel. 🙂 If I didn’t feel 1000% times better (900% would not have been enough), and wasn’t able to keep the weight off for a decade, I wouldn’t do it.
Your mileage will vary of course. But along with gradual exercise and money well-invested in my back (okay, and no more drinking), it’s a big part of why I’m in better shape than I was 25 years ago.
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
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The same thing happened to me as a I turned 40, a truly miserable time to very suddenly get sedentary. My body was already ready to start spreading, and stopping carrying a BetaSP camera with tripod, batteries and lights into the swamps of the Everglades meant a huge amount of energy dissipated into thin air. I learned a lot of this stuff the hard way, but it worked for me.
Note re: back pain: my wife broke her back, and went through a lot of these same cycles as she recovered. This stuff worked for her too.
To continue Michael’s very good advice, start as small as you need to. If you can only walk 2 minutes, do it until you can do more.
As you start to get into a *little* shape from walking around, the new rage is short bursts of something genuinely approaching 110% effort. Even 60-90 seconds, repeated three or four times, of something like running uphill or swimming, will make a huge difference, very quickly.
I’ve been jumping rope, and pulled off a couple of inches in a month – weight the same, just better shape. When I started, I couldn’t even go 30 seconds. Now I barely get 90 seconds before I get wrapped up, but I can unwrap and keep going for another couple of times.
No need to be a hero here. Start with with walking before you do anything else. Start as slow as you need to, build up as you can — but building isn’t the ultimate goal. MOVING is the goal.
What a lot of people experience as back pain is the body reorienting to carry itself with minor muscles as the major muscles get weaker. So I also found that returning to the kinds of weight that I was carrying made a huge difference. That is, carrying a camera is very much oriented toward what is now being called “the core.”
Try very slow squats and deadlifts with similar weights — again, almost certainly starting with NO weight, then building slowly to probably in the 30 pound range, tops. Go slow enough to start that it’s more like stretching than “weight lifing.” You can pick up hand weights up in this range for a song at a sporting goods store.
All that talk about “the core” comes from Pilates. Look into a class or DVD – even YouTube. Again, do it slow enough that it’s more like deep stretching than “exercise.” Yoga is worth looking at for the same reason.
I found that my diet had to seriously change. You’ll figure out what works for you. I found that gradually transitioning to a vegetarian diet, now vegan when it’s practical (better than half the time at the moment). I have a very light frame, and the 50 pounds I gained looked like even more. But I’ve been able to keep it off for the past nine years, and feel better now than I did then.
(What you may not want to hear: if you’re serious about staying in shape, stop drinking. I found that very moderate drinking was costing me 20 lbs./yr. I don’t miss meat and dairy AT ALL, but going from 3 or 4 drinks a week to one or two a YEAR was much harder. I won’t trade it for how much better I feel though. With both, I’m well past the point of feeling like I gave anything up. I’ve embraced living longer and feeling better.
Last but not least, spend serious money on a chair. I spent over $1000 on mine. That relieved my pain embarrassingly quickly. I felt like an idiot because I had let money stand in the way of my health — because once I was no longer hurting (at one point, I couldn’t even stand up straight), I was able to do all the stuff I mentioned above. No excuses: spend whatever it takes.
Okay, HERE’s the last thing. Do the same with your mattress. You’re going to spend around one-third of YOUR ENTIRE LIFE from here on in, and there’s no excuse for not spending as much as you need to. I won’t tell you how much I spent except to say that it was more than the chair…but again, for both my wife and I, it was the difference between night and day, and the difference between being able to get started or not.
The bottom line is that I’m fitter now approaching 50 than I was at 25. And it took maybe 5 years to get here, starting slooooow.
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
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If it’s an important message, or even a not-so-important message for an oh-so-important person, practice first. Start by writing it out.
No kidding.
The good news is that you’ll leave the impression that you’re intelligent, prepared, capable and efficient.
The bad news is that it will come around to bite you in the ass when they find out how you REALLY are.
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Or get good at it as many places as you can as PRACTICE for getting married. Practice makes good enough.
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[Bill Davis] “whether I’m now morally compelled to remove the “Tim Wilson” phone number…from my iPhone…”
It’s not that I’m anti-iPhone, just that I have observed its spotty reliability. Have at it, man.
Although, fwiw, any number you have for me from the early part of the century is almost surely dead. Send me an email and I’ll send you the current one. Hahahahaha!!
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[Virgil Weinstock] “I think Tim was making a joke about iPhones.”
Correct.
[Virgil Weinstock] “Use the phone part of the phone!”
Unless it’s an iPhone. 🙂
Hey, nice profile photo! Except isn’t that Zaius rather than Virgil? 🙂
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While we don’t have a specific forum for this stuff, people talk a lot about this stuff in the Cinematography forum. Even if there’s not an existing thread that speaks directly to your needs — and good on ya for searching before posting — those folks are very, very knowledgeable. I have no doubt that they can get you what you need.
Best,
Tim
Creative COW -
Great point, Kevin. I’m going to go start this thread up in the Motion forum too. See you there. 🙂
tw
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We normally don’t allow all caps posting, but we made an exception for this one. 🙂 Glad you found help here.
Tim Wilson
Creative COW