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Comment by dougmwne | Hacker News Reader

I have a pair of Parrot Zik Noise Canceling Bluetooth headphones. At 326g they are undeniably and uncomfortably heavy. It's not about the headband or earcups, it's the mass it gives your head when turning, leaning, moving. I don't use them because of the weight. At 384g, the Airpod max is about 15% heavier. I currently have a pulled neck as a result of too many hours sitting at my desk. I cannot fathom wearing such a heavy headphone for long stretches. It would be injurious. That Apple would release such a heavy headphone for mass consumption is truly bonkers to me, much crazier than the price.

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My motorcycle helmet weighs 1.6kg and I can wear it all day in gale force winds without experiencing painful neck strain. Not to try to be yours or any one else's doctor, but I think there might be other things at play here than weight -- maybe posture, movement (or lack thereof), or something else entirely should be given more consideration.

I can wear a ski helmet all day, but that is in an athletic stance. I think the risk is in static posture with too much weight on my head. But that is exactly the scenario I would buy these for, so lighter weight is absolutely a selling point. I have other headphones under 300g that are fine all day.

Don't helmets have a completely different pattern of support? I think they're distributed over the entire head.

> I currently have a pulled neck as a result of too many hours sitting at my desk.

I've found doing face pulls at the gym significantly helped build up all the supporting back/neck musculature that I was beating up sitting at a desk all day. Rows also were pretty helpful for my lower back.

Never heard of a "face pull." Is this something you can do without gym equipment?

Doing the motion without weight should be therapeutic, or you could do it with very light dumbbells.

I'd also like to know what a "face pull" is. My first thought was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurn

A face pull involves setting up a cable machine so you can pull a weight horizontally towards your face, until the handles you're pulling with wind up on either side of your head.

It'd be sort of difficult to do without equipment since it's a cable exercise. If you didn't mind buying some resistance bands, and have a reasonably stable point somewhere at head-height to loop them through as an anchor, you could do that at home. (It's an exercise that you're supposed to do with reasonably light weight, so it wouldn't need to be too sturdy.)

EDIT TO ADD: this article has some explicit advice on how to adjust it to do at home on resistance bands: https://athleanx.com/articles/shoulders-for-men/stop-doing-f...

As a personal trainer, yes there are several movements that have the same effect as a Facepull without gym equipment. I would recommend "YTWL" movements in a prone (face down) position. Search YouTube for "YTWL"

It's actually better to start without equipment because those muscles are typically very weak for people who haven't specifically exercised those muscles

Thanks so much for the recommendation!

I had to finally learn about face pulls when I was doing hundreds of pushups per day and a bodybuilder friend pointed out how my front/top delt was massive and my rear delt was soft and flat. And sure enough, looking at myself sideways in the mirror, it was pretty comical.

Though there are other ways to work the rear delt. I prefer some rings at home.

If you're a desk jockey with bad posture you might not want to jump right in to face pulls. I'm a big fan of Athlean-X and all that, but I think a lot of folks aren't ready for even that level of workout. Some of us are so screwed up that the first thing we need is a couple months of foam rolling, scapular activation, awareness training, etc. If you go into face pulls without knowing what a face pull should feel like, you risk ending up with a shoulder issue.

I had shoulder surgery after blowing out my AC joint weightlifting. I went to one PT place that, while good in some areas, focused on strength of my rotators and neglected my mobility. My shoulders got worse after initially getting better and I thought I would need a second surgery. Fortunately I screwed up my lower back so I sought out a new PT place(Catherine at Fields in Motion, Campbell, CA) which not only fixed my back, but identified what was wrong with my shoulder and helped me fix it. It's only now, after months of flexibility and lower-trap strengthening that I know what a face pull is supposed to feel like.

Keep those sternums out, shoulders rolled back, and always keep your core activated(squeeze your cheeks and tighten abs) when you do anything physical. It seems so obvious now, but I went 45 years without figuring it out.

Thanks so much! I will keep this all in mind.

I'm curious if you have a multimonitor setup? The times I've dabbled with it I got neck/eye strain pretty quick from not only moving from left to right screens, but also just never being able to look straight ahead.

You should sit directly in front of a "main" monitor, and then have a secondary monitor alongside. Don't sit directly between two monitors!

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