I am seeing a number of people suffering from pandemic back pain. Pandemic back pain is mechanical back pain caused by a decrease in activity, an increase in sitting, and primarily caused by a significant increase in time spent at a desk at a screen usually on a zoom call.

These people are suffering from pandemic back pain because they are not moving for extended periods of time. They are locked into extended screen time actively working to pay attention. They are not walking to the printer. They are not walking to a coworker desk or from classroom to classroom. They get locked into their chairs and then they bend and twist on a fixed chair. The chair rotates rocks, and pivots but they are moving at their back instead of moving at the chair.

They are locking into place on their chairs so they can be motionless on the screen. They must appear to be focused entirely on the screen and motionless on the webcam to not draw attention to themselves.

I am tired of the pandemic for thousands of reasons. I am tired of pandemic back pain because I have to help people break months of habits, move better, and move more often. So please move.

Try the pomodoro technique: Work for 25 minutes and take a 5 minute break. Get up and do something else. Then do it again with 25 minutes of focused work and a 5 minute break. Set an actual timer. My bet is you will be looking at the timer and unable to do focused work on a single task for more than 5 minutes.

We need to change your flexibility, movement patterns, posture, and joint mobility to fix your back pain. Taking a break more often and getting out of the chair and away from the screen will get you there sooner.

I had my second dose of the Pfizer Vaccine yesterday. I had a slight headache and went to bed very early.

I am feeling pretty good this morning and hoping the day goes smoothly.

I’ll take it easy tonight and get back in my workout routine tomorrow.

I feel a step closer to getting back to the new normal.

This morning I received the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. I had a headache the night of the first dose and went to bed a few hours early. I was tired for three days. I was tired on top of the overall fatigue we all have after a year of this.

I am waiting for the truck to hit. At the same time, I am trying to not bring on psychosomatic symptoms. I am drinking fluids until my eyeballs float. I had my usual lunch ready to go after the vaccination. I will get to sleep in an hour tomorrow morning.

I have clients with no reaction to the first or second dose of the vaccines and others who were floored for 24 hours. I’m hoping for a mild headache to know my body is reacting.

I feel relief and hope after the second dose. We need another two hundred and fifty million people to be vaccinated. That is an incredible number.

I hope you get yours soon.

I am two weeks into the 10000 kettlebell swing challenge and passed the halfway mark this morning. I have done 5200 swings and have 4800 to go.

I am down four pounds with hopefully several more to go. I work through circuits of three kettlebells doing 30 to 60 reps with each bell. My hands are not breaking down like they did last time.

Two more weeks before I need to pick something to train for the next few months.

When I was waiting for my flight to Las Vegas on Frontier Airlines there were eight police officers waiting at the gate. I sat on the other side of the terminal where the seats were empty and the outlets were plentiful. I was surrounded by airport employees with wheelchairs waiting to help passengers with mobility issues. “They sure are rolling in force tonight,” one said.

When the flight landed they escorted a passenger with a young child to a interview room. The child apparently was inconsolable on the flight and other passengers suspected she was being trafficked. They told the flight attendants who told the pilots who radioed ahead to the authorities. It was the appropriate reaction by concerned citizens.

The man and girl were taken into a room by the police and interviewed for five minutes and released. He was her father. There was no trafficking occurring. She had a lousy flight. He didn’t pack enough things to keep her occupied or he didn’t want to pay $50 to bring another carry-on bag.

My guess is that girl was just miserable flying Frontier. Never fly Frontier. Life is too short to fly Frontier Airlines.

Have you ever seen a business set their people up for failure? Have you seen them set their people up to be crushed? Let me tell you a story.

Before the pandemic, I went to a conference in Las Vegas and had a 6 PM return flight. I returned my rental car and learned my flight was delayed. There was no text or email from the airline and the flight was still on-time online.

Our gate was moved three times before the plane arrived. The flight crew, who was supposed to turn around and take us to St. Louis, exited with luggage in tow after hitting their maximum hours.

For hours the board was not updated as if the plane was still leaving at nine even though it was well past nine. The gate crew hid in the secure area between two layers of glass on their phones for two hours before facing 239 angry customers. Six hours later a flight crew was found and two hours later we finally left Las Vegas.

Frontier Airlines killed their staff that night. It appeared as if nobody made any effort to replace a flight crew when it was known at 2 PM, before they even flew to Las Vegas, that they would hit their maximum allowed hours and be done for the day. No meal vouchers were printed until the last minute. Communication was awful with the passengers. Not that flying on Frontier is a positive experience to begin with. I will never fly Frontier Airlines again.

The gate crew was going to get the brunt of it from the passengers that night regardless. But, being out on a limb with Frontier sawing it off behind them was a killer.

I remember a gate agent printing out meal vouchers responding to my question, “I’m just here for a paycheck.” I don’t want to work with someone just there for the paycheck.

I try to set my coworkers up for success and hope they do the same for me. Frontier did not set their people for failure. They set them up to be crushed.

I have been thinking about change tolerance today. When I worked at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, a parent of a Therapy Services patient gave a talk about her experience as a parent.

She described it as planning a trip to Paris. Everybody tells you about the food, the culture, the nightlife, the sights, and what to anticipate. You board the plane. The flight goes smoothly. When you deplane you discover you landed in Amsterdam. You will not be going to Paris. Amsterdam is nice but it isn’t Paris. The food is fine. It has a different culture which is nice. The people are nice. But you expected Paris. Can you tolerate the change?

For the last year we have been on a trip to Amsterdam. Work is different. School is different. Our social lives and family lives are different. If this was all we ever knew we wouldn’t complain but we had been to Paris and expected Paris. We ended up in Amsterdam. Some people have tolerated the change. Some people are demanding to speak to the manager and are leaving scathing reviews on Yelp.

My daughter hasn’t been robbed of her senior year experience. It is not as if only seniors in Saint Louis are missing out. Her entire generation is having a different experience than their predecessors. They landed in Amsterdam instead of Paris. I am trying to help her improve her change tolerance and be ready for next year and the year after that.

I get my second dose of the vaccine on Monday. Welcome to Amsterdam.

I have been able to hear a number of physical therapy and physical development thought leaders speak at conferences over the years.

Shirley Sahrmann, Florence Kendall, Gary Gray, Gray Cook, David Butler, Dr. Yun-Tao Ma, Frans Bosch, Vern Gambetta, Mike Boyle, Louie Simmons are a few that spring to mind.

My contact with some was a lecture or a few days at a course. With some I consumed everything I could find and corresponded as much as I could without becoming annoying.

I had the most contact with Shirley Sahrmann. She taught us at Washington University. I was a lab assistant at her level one course a few years. My practice is a few miles from her home so I see her walking her dogs and send hellos through patients who are her neighbors. I would see her at national meetings and get five minutes of encouragement and advice. The last time I saw her at a physical therapy convention she said greeted me by name and we walked and talked for several minutes before I thanked her and excused myself. We had grown a tail of fifty people waiting to have a work with her and a moment of her time.

Every time I see her I leave feeling good about myself and my decision to become and continue to be a physical therapist.

Her decision making process is the foundation of evaluation and treatment for every physical therapist educated at Washington University for the last 30 years. I have woven other things into my practice but what she taught me remains at the core of my approach to evaluating and treating a patient.

Imagine having half the impact on the people in your life and business that she has had on physical therapy and physical therapists.

Every kid loves snow days and the day off school. Owning your own business means a snow day is a loss of a day’s work. Losing a day of work is lost visits and lost revenue. I used to get frustrated every snow day.

Driving to work during the last storm the stoplight ahead of me turned red. I pressed the brake and slid for the next 300 feet. Fortunately nobody else was on the road. I pulled over, picked up my phone, and cancelled the patients for the day. If someone got injured on the way to or from physical therapy it would defeat the purpose of going to therapy.

We had a snow storm today and lost two thirds of our appointments. I can only take care of the person in front of me. I cannot control the weather.

I focus now on being able to work the rest of the week as being more important than what was missed today. Snow days happen. Do what your can do. Control what you can control. And enjoy the rest of the day when you get an afternoon off.