Can't be worse than yoga.

Edit: Downvote me all you like. I've done yoga, I've done plumbing, I've done electrical. Yoga takes the cake by a mile for most painful contorting.

And yet I know an 86 yo woman who has been doing yoga 3 time a week forever and is fit and sharp.

Huh? Yoga poses are purposeful, they're supposed to be beneficial. Contorting your body all sorts of odd ways while performing a trade is an entirely separate thing from a yoga pose.

Have you ever tried yoga? You might change your mind if you had. It's not a joke.

I've done it many times, even hot yoga. I also have extensive experience wiring up and decommissioning data centers, involving lots of odd contorting. Yoga felt a lot better for me than contorting my body in odd ways.

Agreed - when you're crawling through a tight attic, staying on the joists and avoiding HVAC ducts, going into weird poses to drive j-box mounting screws or something... it's not about staying in "correct" poses.

If doing Yoga is causing damage to your body, it's because you are doing Yoga incorrectly.

Yoga is not a joke. But like other exercises, there are "correct" forms so that you minimize bodily harm.

When you're doing an electrical job, you might have to put your body in strange contortions that don't follow any harm reducing "correct" forms.

You've done some of the work, but do you know many middle-aged or older tradespeople? Their joints are shot and they have aches all over and they fuck up their back on the regular.

There's your speculation and incredulity, and then there's all the people I've talked to who do it. They disagree with you.

I fucked up my back regularly until I'd had enough and started doing a lot of back strengthening exercises, which virtually eliminated the problem. Been doing them ever since. The doc who helped me with this told me that back injuries come from weak backs. You have to specifically work on those muscles to avoid injury.

I found out when waterskiing that you don't get strong waterskiing, you get injured. You have to spend a lot of time in the gym so you don't get injured waterskiing.

Back when I was younger in Seattle, lumberjacking was still a thing. They told me that the limiting thing was injury. They'd work into their sixties. There aren't many jobs harder than lumberjacking. I wouldn't mess with any of them, either, they are freakin' strong and I'm sure they could cleave me from head to toe with a casual swing of the axe.

I'm not in the least surprised that people working in trades mess up their backs, nor do I doubt that they do. But injuring one's back is not the same as wearing it out.

What movements/exercises do you do for your back? I do weighted planks, squats and leg-raise-holds.

1 hour of harder yoga != A 9 to 5 for years of 'easier' awards body positions while building or fixing something. Its cronic pain.