put your back into it!

Some of you may have noticed the lack of blog last week, for this I appoligise, however I do have a reasonable excuse. For about the past ten years I have suffered from a recurring back injury. Mine thankfully cannot be listed amongst those countless gruesome bad back story's involving slipped and ruptured disks or twisted crumbling spines that require treatments straight from the inquisition, with stretching racks and lumber injections. My own back issues are simply caused by years of misuse and neglect, and manifest as painful muscle spasms which can last for weeks.

After one such episode which put me out of action for six weeks I finally decided to act. Countless sessions with various different therapists over the years had helped relieve the pain, but not prevented the same thing happening again a few months down the line. The plain truth was the problem lay in the way I worked and took care of myself. It was an acupuncturist, who while struggling to get needles into my locked up muscle without them bending, put it best, he said "Tell me the most expensive, most used and most vital piece of equipment you have in your workshop?" with a bit of thought I replied "I think I would have to say my table saw" pulling another buckled needle from my back he said "WRONG! It's you." It was a was a good lesson that set me on a path to try to take a bit more care of my rapidly ageing self.

It's in our youth that we punish our bodies with little concern. I recall all the winter days I worked outside on sites, rain soaked and numb with cold with just a T shirt for protection. When young you brush this stuff off and recover quickly, but the neglect is slowly taking its toll and will return to torment you in old age.

So to get myself back on track I started by getting a work environment expert in, who taught me how to lift correctly, best posture for machining and setting the workbenches at a non slouching height. Along with this I invested in efficient heating for the workshop, joined a gym with a good pool and lastly signed up for a weekly Pilates class.

All very well you say, but your back is still out of wack. Unfortunately twenty odd years of wear and tear is hard to correct, however this latest episode is the first in about two years, it only lasted for a week and even at the worst of it I wasn't forced to hobble around on my stick like Yoda.

Unlike a table saw,  the body can't be replaced and upgraded when worn out, so my advice is show it a little tenderness.