Why You Cannot Touch Your Toes, and Whether It Matters
It is one of the few physical tests almost everybody has done. Stand up, bend forward, see how far down you get. People have been measuring themselves against it since school, and a surprising number carry a quiet sense of failure about it decades later. It also comes up constantly in conversations about back pain, usually in the form of somebody assuming that if they could just touch their toes, their back would be fine. The reality is more interesting, and considerably less demanding than most people assume.