This is for all my office people!
If your work life has you sitting at a desk for several hours of the day, the chances are you might have tight hip flexors, a slow metabolism, kyphosis, achy wrists from typing, and poor circulation of blood flow in your lower body.
This isn’t ideal for a healthy lifestyle, but before you flip your desk over, kick your boss’ ass, and storm out of your building, just chill! I’ll give you some tips on how to combat all the negatives of sitting for the majority of the day!
First of all, when you leave your office and come to the gym, you have the stretch those hip flexors out!
The best stretch for your hip flexors/illiopsoas (in my professional option) is the runner’s stretch.
This will help you with overall lower body mobility which can help you throw higher front kicks, take longer strides while running, and get a little deeper for your lunges.
Notice how I said LUNGES, not SQUATS!
You’ve just been sitting for hours, if you want to strengthen your lower body, do yourself a favor and don’t do a move that emulates a sitting position!
I don’t want you to end up looking like the hunchback of your law firm either, so we need to do something to combat all that hunching over that’s been going on at work!
It’s cool, EVERYBODY starts to round their shoulders forward after sitting for a long period of time. The best thing we can do to offset that and get your spine to straighten up is BACK WORK!
Rows/Australian pull ups for the rhomboids (mid back), lat pull downs/pull ups for your latissimus dorsi (outer back), supermen/back extensions for the lumbar spine (lower back) and most of all, reverse flys to target the posterior deltoids (back of the shoulders).
You may even want to do a few extra reps/sets for your back muscles to counteract all the leaning forward that you may or may not have going on to get some good posture back.
How do you know if you have good posture?
Stand upright and have a friend, colleague, or some random guy take a picture of you from the side. You want your ear to be in line with your shoulder.
To my typists out there who can type 200 words per minute…
As impressive as that is, you may over flex your wrist which could lead to some achiness, so something you can do to prevent that once you leave the laptop are wrist curls WITH YOUR PALMS FACING DOWN!
This is done with you in a seated position, your forearms resting on your thighs, with your wrists hanging off your knees, holding onto extremely light dumbells (always do light weights/more reps for these), with your palms facing down. If your palms are up when you curl your wrist, you are just going to help exaggerate your already existing wrist flexion. We want the palms facing down, and your wrist to curl up to target your brachioradialis (forearm) muscles to get some wrist extension going on.
Once again, proper strength training saves the day!
These are all things you can do once you leave work and come to the gym, but don’t forget to do things throughout the day to help you out!
Sit on a stability ball instead of a chair! If for whatever
reason your boss or colleagues don’t condone this, just explain how sitting on these balls will help strengthen your core, develop balance, and burn more calories throughout the day than sitting in a regular chair!
Sprint up and down your stairs! Or, maybe just walk around to keep the blood flow going in your lower extremities.
Keep your back flat against your chair (assuming your boss didn’t like the stability ball idea), and keep your shoulders back AND down to prevent a hunch.
Look away from your computer screen every few minutes to save your eyes some straining and to see that half of the office is really on Facebook instead of working.
Most of all, you must eat healthy if you are going to be sedentary for the majority of your day.
You aren’t going to be moving around, you aren’t going to burn calories, so every little thing you eat must be low calorie and nutritious.
When you go back to work post this blog entry on your Facebook and get your stair sprints on!
