The Aging Programmer [video]

I also used to type a lot more code, as in, my fingers used to type a lot more, I can't physically afford to do that now because after a certain threshold I can feel it in my fingers, and that feeling is not good.

I'd say that even my capability to stay focused on a specific issue has kind of changed, but maybe that's just a me thing, related to my specific life choices/environment, I couldn't tell, maybe some other programmers who have the same age as I do are better at keeping focused, or at least as good as they were 15-20 years ago.

"This is just how it is now" (you know the refrain) becomes a self-fulfilling phrophecy. Could most problems simply be avoided and mitigated until a long time in the future? I don’t know yet.

I don’t have the glass half full attitude yet. Right now it’s mostly "I guess this is just how it is now for me rest of my life." That’s more like my current mindset.

McKenzie's ideas helped me greatly with back pain but did not help with my neck pain I got later. After some years I discovered I had trouble in my jaw which caused referred pain to my neck and shoulders. My dentist recommended a bite guard for my tooth grinding, at which point the pain quickly localized in my jaw and slowly got better -- maybe it hurts a bit one or two days a month now.

The simplified version of McKenzie is that you have back pain because you don't have enough flexibility to be comfortable in a neutral position and your muscles are pushing against each other, it's like the pain you'd have if you used one hand to squish the fingers on your other hand. Exercises that stretch backwards like

https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/how-to-do-cobra-pose

really help, although my favorite is Lowen's "Bioenergetic arch" which is terribly obscure (can't find it online except for a comment about it that I wrote on Reddit years ago!) like most of Lowen's work

https://www.amazon.com/Bioenergetics-Revolutionary-Therapy-L...

and not "destined to become widely influential" which is too bad. You stand with your feet together and put your arms straight up and then stretch backward guided by the visualization that your whole body is bending along a circle. You can do it in a standing position whenever the pain reminds you you have a problem and not have to get down on the floor.

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Another "life hack" was that once I had tendinitis in my hands that was severe enough I thought I had to quit programming. I started doing plain ordinary push ups and the problem cleared up in two weeks and has stayed away ever since. Might not work for you but you can't lose trying it.

My wife was resentful the other day about having to lift a heavy treadmill up the stairs for a person who probably won't make a habit of it. My trainer at the gym told me that the treadmill was the most popular equipment at the gym but also the worst. My trainer introduced me to TRX and kettlebells and I felt pretty stupid because I thought kettlebells were something girls used to look like a dancer in a Kardi B video -- they are that, but they were also one of the Soviet Union's secret weapons when they were crushing everybody in the Olympics.

I told my wife that our friend would be better off with something like that and she said "she has back pain" and in my mind the answer to that is that she needs to get stronger, needs the kettlebells more than I do, just she has to start with lighter weights.