This rant/blog is coming from minor anger at my past self but also the common ingrained perception into people that your work or life habits are shooting you in the foot; you have to spend your days at a desk/ behind a wheel/ performing repetitive tasks etc… so nothing can be changed, or that it’s going to be this impossible mad uphill battle to fight against the soreness.
Here’s the thing though, there are just as many people that have to stand all day, or have physical jobs, even personal trainers that are just as stiff, sore or as limited as you!
Which you should take as a positive!
Do I need to stretch for hours a day to counteract sitting?
Then the other massive barrier I see to making a change to your mobility is the belief that it’s going to take a massive amount of time and effort, when you see the Movement Guru posts of:
There’s an easy-peasy fix instead
So if I was to say it’s actually easy-peasy to counteract sitting, just how easy-peasy are we talking?
You’d be lying if you said you aren’t a bit intrigued now.
When you first get out of bed in the morning, or just before you go to bed in the evening, take 5 minutes and move! Let’s get into why this is so effective and what exactly you do for those 5 minutes.
First thing you want to keep in your mind is: if you’re doing the right things, you will make an improvement, that’s just the way things work. If you’re making an easy habit out of doing the right things regularly then 5-10 minutes a day can be plenty to massively offset the effects of sitting for extended periods of time.
The next thing to realise is the intensity that you experiencing when you are sitting… it’s not that much is it? Your half-flexed hip and rounded upper back isn’t an extreme motion, you’re just resting, it’s just a position. Have you ever seen a cat sleep? I didn’t even know spines could bend that way.
Contrast this to when you’ll be doing your mini routine. The focus and intensity you will have are completely different to a slouch – and that’s damn good! When you actually, consciously pay attention to what you’re doing, your body “listens”, your muscles actively are working and the “intensity” will be way more, which makes it enough to offset those long, passive positions.
The cool thing is that when you adopt a good routine and stick to it regularly, your resting posture will start to improve by itself, and, without realising it, throughout the day you’ll be more likely to bend and move more because your body learns that it likes it, you’ll have a spring in your step and probably get a promotion!!!
How to Get Started
I want to give you two example movements you can do in your morning routine before you leave, but the rest of the blog is also worth sticking out for extra learning about your imbalances and how your through habits might be causing them.
Use your bed, your stairs, a chair – anything! Aim to get as deep into your front leg as you can while trying to extend the back leg as much as you can. Squeeze your butt intermittently in the positions and do both sides:
Rotate your spine and use your breath to create extra range, you’re used to sitting all clumped up all day so this movement will open your ribs and upper back and make your shoulders feel amazing:
And if you want to know a super-secret tip! The zeniths you can even do while you’re doing the clockwork hip drill, like we do in the video at the top of the blog!
Hit the principles, and get creative!
You don’t really realise how much you don’t move until you stop and think. Before I started training in general I pretty much NEVER sat into a squat or lunge, you could be talking years in between my infrequent gym bouts before I really cared about doing any of this stuff, but I just thought that being stiff & sore is how life is because no one ever taught me any different.
The more you do these routines you’ll start to develop your own little movements to start adding in but keep the principles in! You can get loads of ideas of different exercises to use from our YouTube channel, make sure to subscribe!
Now… for extra bonus credits take the Daily Habits Challenge!
Try this for me, in the back of your head just keep a low level of alertness. Try to catch yourself throughout the day when you’re sitting, standing or lying down. What are your hips doing? Do you always default to one side? Try sitting the complete opposite way, does it feel really uncomfortable and unnatural to you?