How to LITERALLY approach writing like an athlete.

The Physical Side of Writing

When you become a writer, everyone tells you it’s really hard.

Everyone tells you that you’re going to fail a lot, you’re going to get rejected, and at first, you’re going to be terrible. If you hear all of that and decide to keep going anyway, you’re either really stubborn, determined, or crazy.

One of the most common types of writing advice is to approach writing “like a sport”.

I’ve read a lot of writing advice in the last few months, but I’ve seen no writing advice that offers suggestions to deal with the back pain, carpal tunnel, or eye strain that comes with being a writer. I can’t be the only one; this pain is very real.

I’ve been a writer for just a few months now, but I’ve been a competitive athlete for my entire life. I know a thing or two about managing injuries.

I’ve had knee surgery, torn both labrums in my shoulders, and dealt with intense burnout from overstressing my body in training.

Yet, after just a few months of writing every day, my body has been feeling the effects. I had begun to dread the thought of writing because of the pain that was coming with practicing my craft.

At night, I couldn’t sleep because of the intense pain in my wrists, during the day, I couldn’t focus well at the computer because of the pain in my upper back.

When I closed my eyes to sleep, the eye strain caused me headaches that drove me demented.

I was becoming an old man decades before my time.

Here’s what I’ve been doing to help take care of my health while investing hours on hours into my writing:

Daily Strength Training

Obviously, you do not need to train like Ronnie Coleman or David Goggins to write better or help your writing-related ailments.

However, studies show physical exercise might just work wonders for your creative flow. It will also relieve that back pain that comes from sitting hunched over at your computer like the focused gargoyle that you are.

Specifically, exercises like deadlifts, pull-ups, and bench press have helped me focus on my posture while also strengthening the muscles in my back.

At the very least, hanging from a pull-up bar and spending a few minutes on a foam roller will help to loosen up the tightness that comes from spending hours in a chair writing.

I can be a bit of a hyperactive meathead who likes to torture himself in the gym because it’s the only way I can really sustain focus without drugs, but I will always swear by the idea that that physical training can be helpful to anyone who’s trying to do anything creative more effectively.

Less physical pain = More writing = Less mental pain

Stretching

Before I started writing every day, I didn’t stretch at all.

I train martial arts every day and have for years, but I do not stretch. I never have.

Why? A lack of discipline, probably.

Then one day, I realized that the muscle tightness in my back from sitting at my computer writing all day was effectively putting a damper on everything in my life. Sitting down for meals was uncomfortable because I had just been sitting down to write. The back pain. The. Back. Pain.

All of your writing-related injuries are probably overuse injuries, meaning that stretching and rest are the best forms of recovery.

I started using my foam roller, which led to me doing some “yoga-like” poses. I’m decently flexible, but true yogis would probably scoff at my excuse for a downward dog. I’m not stretching because I want to, I’m stretching because if I don’t, my body isn’t going to let me move properly all weekend.

Like I said, I’m an old man.

I’ve also had to stretch in order to help my carpal tunnel that began to form in my wrists. That’s right, I’ve started doing hand stretches.

There’s no technical term for it, but I’m calling it “hand yoga”. If you want to type for hours at a time, you’ll have to do some sort of hand yoga. Your wrists will thank you later.

What I do (I know, this is weird) is I pretend that I’m holding a basketball and pretend to move the ball around in my hands. I stretch my hands as wide as possible. This helps me loosen my hands and spend more time at the keyboard and less time taking a break because my wrists hurt.

Meditation

I’m still pretty new to meditating and I do feel kind of silly for telling anyone to meditate as I’m not an expert.

But here it goes anyway:

Ever since I started writing every day for several hours a day, I’ve had to really focus on my meditation practice. This does wonders for my body because it forces me to really relax my body that is otherwise fidgeting in the chair all day.

Meditation also really helps the eye strain that comes from staring at my screen for hours at a time.

My practice helps my mind work more efficiently when I am at the computer or typing on my phone. My early blog posts took up to 6–7 hours to write (sometimes days at a time if I did extra research), but now I’ve been able to cut it down to writing a post in an hour and a half or so, plus 30–45 minutes of editing.

I’m proud of my incremental improvements and I chalk most of it up to the fact I take 15–20 minutes every day and practice mindfulness.

In Conclusion

When I started writing, the idea of being able to do something that wasn’t going to physically hurt me was thrilling. I didn’t realize what I was signing up for it.

I’m not a speed demon on the keyboard, and I probably won’t ever be.

I am increasing my efficiency slowly but surely every week. I’m trying to approach writing like a professional athlete, not the amateur artist that I am. Professional athletes go to work every day, and they train around injuries.

When you’re an athlete, physical pain is not an excuse to not deliver your best effort. I don’t see why I should approach writing differently.

Also, can we start a petition to change the term for carpal tunnel from “Writer’s Cramp” to “Writer’s Wrist”? I don’t understand why this hasn’t been done before.

What do you do to deal with your “writing-related injuries”?