In the UK, a major new memorial has been unveiled to honour the many animals that sacrificed their lives in war. But you may just have another four-legged enemy in your life.

It seems though, that your enemy might be four-legged too, and it's not that nippy terrier that comes after you when you go cycling. You have an expensive office chair and your car seat is designed by Nasa, yet you regularly have lower back pain. Bending down to pick up a sheet of paper is fraught with danger. Could you be going about it the wrong way?

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Back pain is a fact of modern life. From guys driving buses to high-powered honchos in stretch-limos, that nagging ache in the lumber vertebrae has become a common denominator we'd rather do without.

Stretching is really important. We've written about stretches before and that's certainly important. A good lower-back workout regimen is important too, especially when you remember that your back is essentially a column of bones that relies on an exquisitely flexible network of muscles to support it.

So here's an unorthodox regimen to free your back from its world of pain. It might not work for everyone, but few things do.

Throw away that chair. Ever noticed how people who can't afford chairs cope? Very well, thank you. There are cultures that find it very comfortable to squat on their heels, to kneel or to sit cross-legged. Many of us chair-holics start squirming after a few minutes of any of that. Start with a carpet, rather than a hard stone floor. Writing in Yoga Journal, Andreas Kluth, the San Francisco correspondent for The Economist, says working in the Far East made him exasperated enough with his own inflexibility to do something drastic. He'd asked his yoga teacher why he couldn't get into some of the more challenging positions and the teacher said it was his chair's fault. Kluth started sitting on the floor for an hour a day. Thirty years of chair-dependence had to be undone, and it took months, but in his new office he has no chairs – just two tatami mats.

Roll with it. If going chairless is a little too radical for you, try an exercise ball. The big 85cm ones will fit under a desk and take up no more space than that poem in leather, steel and carbon the head of Human Resources sits in. The ball has no back support of course, but that's part of the benefit. You'll be forced to sit with your feet placed apart and squarely on the floor, and with your back straight. Neglecting to do either of these could result in you tipping over. An added bonus is that you can lie down on it, with your feet apart and move up and down the ball. It's an excellent toning movement for back muscles. Doing it while working on your laptop is regarded as showing off.

Get a tune-up. If you're giving your back a workout and still have pain, it could be that your spine's a bit out of alignment. See a chiropractor. Many people have found years of nagging pain relieved with a couple of sessions and some simple stretching exercises. You won't even need to wear a saddle or get shot at while you do it.

(William Smook)
 

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