favourites by category:
- fitness:
Becoming a supple leopard
- fiction:
Seveneves
- non fiction:
Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently

It's a slow process, especially because of your age and height (6'4.5" here and I've always had trouble too). Start working on mobility a lot, check out the book "Becoming a supple leopard" - it's a great source of knowledge.

other useful books along these lines are Becoming a Supple Leopard, The Body Keeps The Score, anything by Joe Despina

In my estimation, especially on the east coast, most people are more tense than they consciously realize

I enjoyed that you pointed out avoiding caffeine as a way to detense

I recommend Limber 11 to get started: https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/limber-11-the-only-lower-bo...

Eventually you'll need to fine tune the program according to your needs. Becoming A Supple Leopard is basically the encyclopedia for mobility programs/exercises: https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Supple-Leopard-2nd-Performan...

Have a mobility routine. Flexibility and strength go hand in hand. Either without the other is often what leads to injuries. Having been someone who lifted without working on flexibility and suffered a lot of injuries I can attest to that. For me yoga and the book "Becoming a supple leopard" by Kelly Starret helped a lot.

Kelly Starrett, an expert on mobility, has great short pieces on how to optimally sit and walk to improve posture:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/sit-better-live-better-excer...

http://www.allthingsgym.com/kelly-starrett-on-posture/

I would highly recommend his book "Becoming a Supple Leopard" to all lifters and anyone generally interested in improving their posture.

Consider reading the Mindbody Solution. It’s a seemingly absurd book which I found to be a helpful perspective on addressing unexplained pain.

Also read Becoming a Supple Leopard. Also seems ridiculous but offers important perspective on referred pain and resolving issues all over the body through self massage, PT, and exercise.

I suffered from mild bruxism about 10 years ago and have had several bouts of TMJD where I couldn’t close one side of my jaw. For me, the key has been poor posture induced by stress; these bouts coincide with heavy laptop and mobile phone use (neck angle forward and down). What fixed it for me was switching to a good desktop set-up whenever possible and self-treatment via Kelly Starrett’s Becoming A Supple Leopard (there is whole section in the second edition on neck and jaw). He has good general advice in this video as well - https://youtu.be/kfg_e6YG37U

I haven’t used the mouthguard now in probably 5 or more years.

Here's my whole list for the year in reverse chronological:

- Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

- Tools of Titan by Tim Ferriss

- Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen

- Scrum: A Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction by Chris Sims

- Build Better Products by Laura Klein

- Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Picketty

- Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

- Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez

- Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin

- Grit by Angela Duckworth

- Love Sense by Sue Johnson

- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

- Working Effectively With Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

- Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

- Sprint by Jake Knapp

- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb

- Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett

- Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock

- The Inner Game Of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

- Design Sprint by Richard Banfield

- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

- The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

- Advanced Swift by Chris Eidoff

- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Some of these books are older and had been on my list for awhile. Some were released this year. Most of these books are very good. I usually stop reading bad books by the end of the first chapter.

It's not the sitting itself that is harmful, rather the host of tissue impingements and unfavourable biases in your musculature caused by sitting, or wearing shoes with elevated heels, etc.

Such issues cause us to compensate by adopting a different posture; one that will allow us to perform a desired movement now, but in the long run we suffer the consequences of this maladaptation.

An oft-cited example of a harmful adaptation is the proliferation of "heel-striking" running technique, which is a consequence of many people having poor ankle mobility (thanks, Nike).

To combat this, we can first establish what an ideal posture should be for a given movement, perform that movement under resistance, and use it to expose the areas in which we have a structural problem.

We then use that information to target problem areas (e.g. stiff hamstrings, shortened heel-cord, etc) with myofascial release and stretching.

Make mobility work a part of every workout you do (15-20 mins a day): use foam rollers/lacrosses balls to remove knots; use "banded distraction" to open up stiff joints. In my experience and anecdotally, such effort yields excellent results for pain-relief and improved posture.

I highly recommend Kelly Starlett's book "How to Become a Supple Leopard" and Steve Maxwell's mobility programs.

All human movement is a skill and anything you "do wrong" over and over again will eventually cause injury. I'd recommend you take a look at Dr. Kelly Starrett's book "Becoming A Supple Leopard" the title may seem silly but the information inside is life changing.

Here is the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Supple-Leopard-Preventing-Per...

I can also help if needed, contact should be in my profile.

For both goals (back pain and breathing exercises) I'd highly recommend the book "Becoming a Supple Leopard" by Dr. Kelly Starrett. http://www.roguefitness.com/becoming-a-supple-leopard

Kind of an esoteric title, but the book is filled with outstanding information and actually specifically addresses the standard MD diagnosis of inflexible calves and how to really drill down to the root cause. Definitely worth a read. Good luck and congrats on setting self improvement goals!

Tim Ferris's second book, the 4 Hour Body is a decent starting place for beginners who want to lose weight, increase muscle mass, get stronger and a bunch of other performance/fitness related topics. There's a chapter called 'The Harajuku Moment' where he outlines the steps that he used to help Rails-nerd Chad Fowler lose 70+ pounds of weight and increase his strength. I'd highly recommend Tim's book (The 4 Hour Body) to anyone who's interested in "hacking your body".

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/28/the-big-ques...

Another book/person I'd recommend HIGHLY is Kelly Starrett. He recently did a 2 day seminar on Creative Live about resolving pain, preventing injury and optimizing athletic performance. He's also coming out with a book at the end of April called "Becoming a Supple Leopard". You can check out a 50 page preview of the book below:

http://www.allthingsgym.com/50-page-sample-of-kelly-starrett...

I had minor back pain and also pickup strength training including doing "starting strength". The biggest difference though was reading "Becoming a supple leopard" and focusing on getting mobility and flexibility back to my lower body. Getting your pelvis back into a neutral position will do wonders for your back but that requires focusing on short hamstrings and hip flexors that comes with sitting all day.