Even before the days of coronavirus and work-from-home as a cultural movement, many of us struggled with sitting for hours a day due to work and the sedentary pace of modern life. As we now know, the effects of constant sitting can be very harmful to the human body, with the Mayo Clinic highlighting high blood pressure, obesity, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol as relevant concerns for those who sit for much of their waking hours.
Fortunately, there’s an equal and opposite reaction for every inaction, to borrow the famous phrase. Let’s highlight some movements that can reverse the harmful effects of sitting for prolonged periods, day in and day out.
Moves to Reverse Sitting All Day
Perhaps the best tip for reversing the effects of prolonged sitting isn’t any one move or other. Instead, it’s merely making a priority of movement regularly throughout the day. If you sit for work, set a timer reminding you to get up and move around every half hour. Maybe you can use this time to do some stretches or running in place. Whatever you do, shake out the creaks that set in during lengthy sitting sessions, and you’ll feel more loose and limber overall.
Now, on to the specific exercises and movements that can keep you healthy while sitting.
Pull-ups
If you don’t have a pull-up bar, it’s one of the best tools for posture that you can have in the house. Pull-ups can be performed without dedicated equipment if you have the right door frames or other household features. However, you choose to perform the motion, the exercise will target muscles throughout your shoulders and upper back to reverse the negative impact on posture that weeks of sitting can have.
Bicycle, Crunches, and Ab Work
One of the fastest body regions to go soft if you work in an office (or on the couch at home) is the belly. Take a few minutes each day and find an ab exercise that can be performed with bodyweight on the floor. Of the many options available, a bicycle exercise is one of the best, but there are many others.
Search YouTube for ab exercises that fit your fancy, perform them daily, you’ll soon see a difference in the appearance of your core muscles. This will also help your posture, and the exercise also works as cardio, which will help strengthen your heart, which can also suffer from sitting.
Cardio
Now that we’re on the subject, cardio exercises will help reverse the effects of sitting by increasing your heart rate in healthy doses. Go for a jog, run up and down the steps, do some jumping jacks, ride your bike – whatever you do, find a way to elevate your heart rate for at least an hour each week.
Squats
A well-performed squat will challenge most of the stabilizer muscles in your legs while stretching you out and also working the lower back muscles that can become sore and weak from a lifestyle of sitting. Work on developing a smooth squat form, and try to do as many as possible in a single set, gradually working up to 100 at a time and beyond.
If the above isn’t enough to reverse the aches and pains of sitting for work, you may also be dealing with some of the unavoidable discomfort brought on by age. For joint pain of this kind, we can recommend Synthovial Seven Age-Defying Formula from Hyalogic, InflamAway from Natura Health Products, and DMSO 99.9% Pure Liquid from DMSO. These, combined with the above exercises and motions, can make all the difference if you frequently sit.
