5 Tips to be fit while you sit!

If you work at a desk for 8 hours a day, don’t let it ruin your body!  Sitting is the new smoking.  Sitting with improper posture or slouching for extended periods of time causes stress and physiological change to the body.  Some muscles weaken and become harder to activate while tension and reduction in length can occur in others.  Research has indicated that extended periods of sitting have been associated with obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and bowel cancer.  Stay fit while sitting with these 5 tips:

1. Take the stairs. Make this a rule whenever and wherever you can.  It’ll force you to do some physical activity throughout your day.

2. Stand up and get a drink. Even if you’re busy throughout the day try and schedule yourself water breaks at set intervals to force yourself to get up and move around.

3. Roll your feet. Leave a ball or water bottle under your desk. Take your shoes off, and roll the bottom of your feet back and forth over the entire arch of your foot to help release tissue tension and improve blood flow to get that stiffness out.

4. Listen to your body! Simply being more in-tuned with your body will help you improve your posture throughout the day as you sit.  Your body will give you cues to move, listen to those cues and perform micro-movements to give your body some novel input as it demands it.  This can be as easy as posturing up or simply standing and reaching for the sky for a few seconds.

5. Stretch out those hips! when you sit for 8 hours a day, what happens is your hips remain in hip flexion the entire time.  What this does is create more of a sensory-motor amnesia where your body forgets the ‘feeling’ of moving through a full range of motion through the hip. Your muscles forget! As it is often said, if you don’t use it, you lose it!