3 Exercises To Use If You Sit All Day

With the advent of standing desks, treadmill desks, posture pillows and endless reminders on our smartwatches to “stand up and get moving” (really getting sick of those), it’s no secret that our community does a fair amount of sitting.  

If you’re one of those folks at a standing desk, walking 2 hours per day, rarely texting or staring at a computer and just kicking the crap out of life, good for you!  For the rest of us, we have become borderline professional sitters.  Not the kind that gets paid $200 a night to watch Sally and Sam for a few hours either.  Fully unpaid, gravity-stricken sedentary soldiers. 

So what do we do?  We go to the gym for an hour and do exercises that keep us vertical!  Many of the exercises in the gym look weirdly like standing up or getting off the floor for this reason.  

So for those of us looking to do 15 minutes of exercise to counteract the 10 hours per day of sitting (it’s a terrifying equation) here are 3 exercises that present the most bang for your buck, or stand for your sit.  

Hip Hinge 

Sitting puts our hips in a flexed position for hours on end.  What’s a good way to fight excessive hip flexion? Hip extension of course! Firing up the glutes and hamstrings by training the hip hinge can be a great way to be standing straight up at your 25 year high school reunion.

Rowing Variations 

Kyphosis has become the buzzword of our generation.  With countless rounded shoulders and slumped chests, our upper back musculature is generally locked long and weak. Thanks gravity.  

Mixing in rowing variations can help keep our upper back posture strong as we age.  While pushing exercises generally look the sexiest in the gym, the strongest and healthiest folks that I’ve been around are consistently using pulling variations in their programs.  

Deadbug

In our losing battle with gravity, it’s easy to lose tone, tension and function of the frontside of our bodies.  Our abdominals help keep our ribcage and pelvis stable when we finally do stand up, giving us the key to reaching, rotating, dancing, etc. If we aim to move without pain and dysfunction, training our core musculature is imperative.  Bring it on gravity.  

If you are someone who is constantly sitting.  Thank you for your service.  The majority of our work these days is done in a seated position.  While these exercises are a good place to start, they will struggle to counteract sitting on their own.  Work to change positions every 30 minutes at work and fight to keep your body in a receptive and pliable state.  Happy standing! 

*P.S: At times, we have become so “anti-sit” that we spend our whole day standing at desks, treadmills, etc.  If you fall into this category, you know who you are!  Take a break once in awhile!