Although I am young I have been very lucky in my career to only have one serious injury, and that was to my throwing shoulder.

Recently I have been dealing with some hip and lower back pains.  Nothing to crazy just more or less nagging at my right side.  I looked at my workouts and didn’t see much of a problem.  I checked my footwear and found it to be correct for my feet.  I moved on to my ankle and hip mobility work and saw that they were in a normal range for myself.

So what gives?

I realized after a thanksgiving induced food coma that I woke up face first, neck cramped, body all over the place in a pillow.  This may seem normal to most, but I realized that I had been waking up like this on a regular basis and sleeping on my chest has always lead to general body aches.

So starting that night when I go to sleep I stuff a pillow between my legs to help create a more neutral hip and spine alignment when I sleep.  Every day since my pain has been gone.

Don’t search “pillow between legs” on Google images without a filter on, you may be surprised at what shows up.

Now do I think this will cure everything, unfortunately no, but I realized one of the problems I’m dealing and corrected it along with making subtle changes to my training to correct the problems.

With all that being said, small simple adjustments can often have a large impact.  I used this technique with a pillow for a friend whom had dealt with lower back pain for years, seeing someone who woke up everyday in pain to waking up in no pain is slightly happier to say the least.