Why does it hurt to stand up after sitting?

Do you have the Sit-to-Stand Blues?

Does your body hurt, ache, and not exactly work when you stand up after sitting during dinner, work, or TV time? Rest assured that there is nothing egregiously wrong. Feeling stiff after sitting for a while is common, and easy solutions exist. First, let’s investigate what’s happening to cause the stickiness.

What causes us to feel stiff after sitting?

1. 1. 1. Tissue creep. That sounds so untechnical, like a bunch of thugs waiting around the corner of your tissues –waiting to pounce! But it’s actually a technical term. Tissue creep means that our back muscles stretch when we sit – this is normal. If we’ve never had back pain, those muscles quickly return to their normal length when we stand up. If we’ve ever had back pain (say hello to 90% of the population), the muscles are slow to return to their normal length.  What does that mean? It means those muscles aren’t ready for the job of standing for about 20-30 minutes after you’ve been sitting.  And just so you know, this doesn’t just apply to backs. It could apply to any body part that is being stretched while seated.
      2. Tissue fluid. The fluid in our connective tissue, organs, vessels, and pretty much anywhere else needs room to move and flow. Have you ever fallen asleep on your hand or arm? Then you know what it’s like when the flow is not ideal. In very simple terms, thing about the flow being like a hose, the hose can’t have kinks if we are going to get ideal flow. Also, remember that if you have areas of injury or a symmetric alignment, like scoliosis, you might have changes to the connective tissue that don’t allow ideal flow. Nothing to worry about, just something to know.
      3. Then there’s the alignment of sitting. Are you hunched? Is your chin jutting forward, your tummy sagging, and are you putting undue pressure on any particular joint? While I’m not advocating only one way to sit, there are certainly better options – and better chairs. If you spend a lot of time sitting, you really need to think about how and where you sit.

The solutions

It’s easier than you think to say goodbye to the Sit-to-Stand Blues and jump up a bit more quickly. Here are some things to try:

• • • When you are sitting for a while, try placing your hands at your lower back and performing a little spine extension—lift your chest to the clouds. Do this very gently ten times. You are trying to actively get those muscles out of their “creep” and ready for standing activity.
    • Get things moving before you stand. You can:
      1. Do the Scolio-Pilates Wiggle*
      2. Bend and straighten your knees. 5- 10 times.
      3. Circle your ankles and squeeze your toes. 5 in each direction.
      4. Roll your shoulders – it’s okay to take some liberty here and look like a chicken.
      5. Squeeze your bum! Get the bum tissues active and ready for standing!
    • Seated alignment. Get elongated. It’s okay to change your position while seated; it will greatly help with the Creep and Fluid bullet points above. However, think about your elongation. Each vertebra is a ball that can roll back and forth to length. Or you can think about a breeze expanding the space between the vertebrae.

The moral of the story? You can do a LOT about the Sit-To-Stand Blues. Goodbye blues, hello butt squeezes, wiggles, foot circles, and elongation.  You got this. And we’re here to help make sure that you do!

Shum, Gary L. K. BSc*†; Crosbie, Jack PhD*; Lee, Raymond Y. W. PhD‡. Three-Dimensional Kinetics of the Lumbar Spine and Hips in Low Back Pain Patients During Sit-to-Stand and Stand-to-Sit. Spine 32(7):p E211-E219, April 1, 2007. | DOI: 10.1097/01.brs.0000259204.05598.10

Patrick Ippersiel, Shawn Robbins, Richard Preuss, Movement variability in adults with low back pain during sit-to-stand-to-sit,
Clinical Biomechanics, Volume 58, 2018, Pages 90-95, ISSN 0268-0033, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2018.07.011.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268003318304522)

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