What your chair is doing to your hips

Sit down for eight hours and your hip flexors, the muscles at the front of the hip that lift the knee, spend the whole day short. They get comfortable like that. Stand up and they do not lengthen back; they pull the pelvis forward and the lower back takes the strain. That ache you feel at the end of the day, just above the belt, is very often not your back at all.

I can usually see it before anyone says anything. A slight forward tilt in standing, a reluctance to straighten the back leg in a lunge, and a look of surprise when I ask where it hurts and they point to their hips rather than their spine.

Two shapes help, and neither needs a mat. The first is a low lunge with the back knee on the floor and the hips pressed gently forward, held for five slow breaths on each side. The second is lying on your back with one knee hugged in and the other leg long on the floor, letting the long leg get heavy. Do both after work rather than before, when the tightness is at its worst and there is something to undo.

Give it two weeks. The ache does not vanish, but it stops being the first thing you notice when you stand up, and that is how these things go: not away, but quieter.