The Muscle Incident - A Cautionary Tale

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:56:22 +0200

A few weeks ago I hurt my back. Badly. Today I will tell you what happened and what hindsight bias has to do with it.

The Setup

I do have a regular fitness routine and from time to time I hurt my back by straining a muscle. It’s a very unpleasant feeling and makes you realise how many daily movements require your lower back to be flexible.

The first time it happened I freaked out and visited my doctor, because I thought I had dislocated my spine. Her answer was that I “need to chill more and stay relaxed, or the tension will just become worse”.

She was right and over the years I learned to be more careful and that slow stretching is both great for prevention and to help it heal faster. Sometimes a very light workout to keep the muscles moving was also of great help. Usually the whole thing takes about 5 to 7 days and then all is good again.

2026

Knowing these things, we fast forward to this spring. It’s always a bit hard to pinpoint which action exactly caused the strain, but a day after a heavy workout in the gym I noticed this familiar feeling again. So I did the usual routine - stretching and a light workout. And it helped as usual. Over the next hours it would become better and when I wake up the next morning it would be nothing but a memory.

Not this time. With every hour it became worse and by the evening I was not able to make any movement without pain. Think of me screaming into the void here.

The pain was bearable, so over the next days I kept working and doing my basic chores, but besides that focused on resting and lying down. But the experience was not pleasant, the pain made me tired and it took a really long time to improve. Every day was a little bit better than the day before, but instead of taking a week the whole story stretched over 3 weeks.

After the first week I was brave enough to go into soft stretching again. Loosening up the muscle carefully. Moving still hurt and I was walking like a 90-year old, but it was only a few days until my vacation where I would fully relax and focus on my back. We also walked a lot during vacation, but within the first week I really recovered and… all was good.

Four days later, still on vacation, I was sitting on a chair for breakfast. When I stood up, the pain jolted through me again - It was all back. I instantly noticed, that this time it was a different muscle (slightly higher) but it was very similar. The rest of the vacation wasn’t as much fun, every step was a brief moment of pain. Looks like I have to go through all of this again.

Coming back home, the pain was better but it was still present for certain movements and walking felt a bit weird. When going for the shower I caught a brief glimpse of myself in the mirror and shockingly realised that my posture had shifted. My right hip was moved outside by several centimeters, my body made a very visible C-curve. At this point I arranged a doctor’s visit.

Diagnosis

When you were reading the events, you probably have thought about what was going on and where things went wrong. I did the same, basically every night. Analysing what I had done that day and if I should have done something different. Was it good that I tried light movement? Should I have stayed in bed? Was sitting on a chair smart?

After each decision it is quite easy to say if it was a good idea or not, because the pain either got better or worse. This is what we call “hindsight”, and it makes it very easy to judge people for their behaviour. Knowing how the story ends shapes your whole perception of events and actions taken before.

The good news first - My issue was still a minor issue, I had a bad lumbar strain. But imagine I would have caused an issue to my spine. Visiting a doctor should have been the first thing to do. However, the first time I had this issue I did exactly that - visiting a doctor. Getting the diagnosis that all is fine. Given several similar issues over the years, why would I suspect this one to be different?

Take the start of the story - my back felt off and I decided to do some light movement. The outcome was that this actually made everything worse. Knowing the outcome, this clearly was a wrong decision - but it was shaped by what I knew at the time and my past experiences. From my perspective at that moment in time, the decision made sense.

Incident Reviews

My experience is not far from an incident as we see them happening every other day in software development. Systems are never flawless and have issues sooner or later, like my back. Once that happens, it is important to understand the root causes, but first you need to stop the pain and mitigate the incident. Bring the systems back operating. Sometimes this takes a few minutes, sometimes it takes hours and is full of failed attempts before one succeeds.

When you later review this incident, think of the hindsight bias. Instead of being critical with the decisions made and judging whether it was the right decision or not, start asking: in which context was the decision made? If there have been signs that are now obvious, why didn’t people at that time realise? Were these signals buried among other signals? Did they not know where to look?

I tried to help myself with physical exercise. In hindsight not a great idea. An engineer might restart a system, but failure continues. You may later be tempted to ask: “Why didn’t they do the right thing from the start?”. Don’t do it.

Instead, focus on the signals they saw and how you can make the critical signals more visible in the future. We are not only reviewing incidents to figure out what happened. We are reviewing them to learn and improve in the future. Like I have changed my exercise routine to make my back more flexible. We learn and we improve for the future.

Hindsight on Code And Cake

The Muscle Incident - A Cautionary Tale

The Setup

2026

Diagnosis

Incident Reviews