Walk upstairs instead of taking the lift. We advise people to do stretching exercises. A lot of people go to the gym to try and tone up, but they need to remember to stretch when they warm up and cool down. There's some science behind it, too, Liz Ellis explains. Unless people do some kind of body maintenance, they tend to have very lax abdominal muscles.
Tense abdominals take the pressure off the back muscles.
I recommend that my patients find a properly trained pilates teacher, and be mindful of their posture every day, tucking in your tail and holding in you abdominal muscles, rather than doing exercise twice a week. BackCare recommends pretty much everything you can think of - stretching, swimming, walking, yoga, Alexander Technique, tai chi, exercise bicycles with upright handlebars . . . Anything to get you limbered up and out of that slumped, static posture of the nine to five. There is so much back pain in this country that there simply aren't enough chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists to go round. Staples, the office superstore, with branches nationwide, stocks a range of office chairs.