Sitting Is A Dangerous Habit! Here’s How To Make It Safer.

 

Sitting is a bad habit for most of us. When we are finished with one thing, we sit and think about what we have to do next. It wasn’t always that way. Sitting for long periods is new to humans. We were designed to move, and for thousands of years, we moved to stay alive, to find food, and to protect our families and ourselves. Not so much anymore. Sitting is the activity of choice these days. On average, Americans sit 13 hours each day. Add 8 hours of sleeping and you have 21 hours per day of inactivity. Ouch!!! Sitting is a dangerous habit.

A wise man said, “If you are 30 and your spine is stiff, you are old. If you are 60 and your spine is flexible, you are young”. Most people, especially serious computer and heavy cell phone users, office people, executives, and technicians roll forward at the desk, isolate their abdominal muscles, and wind up taking short, quick, shallow breaths with their torso muscles, operating only a small portion of the lungs. We need to learn not to hold our abdominal muscles in all the time. Too many of us breathe from our mouth and shoulders, not our diaphragm and ribs. This just overworks muscles not designed to do this work.

Here’s an easy exercise you can do at your desk, called Standing Roll Down: Get up from your chair, stand up with a neutral spine, feet hip-width apart, and knees lightly bent. Inhale; lift both arms straight overhead and let your shoulder blades slide down the back. Exhale, lower both arms, and lengthen your spine, with ribs vertical. Now exhale, drop your chin to your chest while you roll the spine forward and down, slowly, one vertebra at a time. Inhale and pause there. Now exhale, bring your abdominals up and in, and reverse the spine back to tall and neutral.

This is the season for sitting. We sit with family and friends, we sit in the airport waiting for our flight, and we sit in airplane seats that offer the worst ergonomics in the modern world. The powerful butt muscles, designed to get us up and out of the chair, to walk, climb, and run, are reduced to a flabby cushion by the amount of sitting we do. We can easily counter that, though. One good way is to get up every 20 minutes or so. Set a timer or an alarm on your phone or computer so that you get up 2-3 times an hour. When you watch TV, follow the same schedule; get up every 20 minutes or so. Time your getting-ups to the commercials and you will really be doing yourself a favor!

Here’s a biomechanical point: Movement occurs with the abductor muscles of the leg (the muscles that move the legs away from center of the body) and the adductor muscles (the muscles that move the leg toward the center). Most of us use the adductor muscles, the inner thigh muscles, to walk, to sit, to face the desk, and to use the computer and other instruments. We wind up scrunching over to one side or the other, facing the table or desk at an angle and slouching. We need a series of exercises that promote hip stability and strengthen the abductor muscles so that we can sit up straight and not lean forward or to one side. This is a whole body issue, not a shoulder, or even just a hip issue. It requires a “global” solution to what you might think is a ”local” problem, namely, your shoulder, neck, or knee discomfort or pain.

If we don’t have the upper body strength to lift ourselves out of our waist as we sit, we will drop deeper into the pelvis, limiting our movement and rotation. However, if we lift our arms above our head, clasp and then reverse our grip, and reach for the sky, we can counter this sinking. This vertical movement will open the upper back and the abdominal cavity, increase O2 flow, and strengthen the extension muscles of the back. We will then develop a balance to the too-strong flexor muscles of the front of the body.

The shoulder is capable of almost any movement we can imagine. It also has a true hinge function. When we sit at the computer, work at a desk, or talk on the phone, our shoulders roll forward, compromising that hinge function and causing neck and upper back pain. When we give someone a hug or pick up a child or a bag of groceries, we are using the hinge function of the shoulder. Usually, we just use the neck, head, and upper back, forgetting that we can use the shoulder and the upper back in concert. That’s a recipe for shoulder and neck pain. We need to learn how to use the shoulder joint as a hinge.

Here’s an easy exercise to learn how: Get up, go to the wall, and stand about a foot away from the wall, with your butt and back on the wall. Clasp your hands together and raise your arms straight over your head to the wall. If your butt and back come off the wall, you need this exercise big-time. Go as far as you can, keeping everything on the wall. It gets better with practice. Obviously, we all need exercises that will ease the tension in the muscles of the upper back and neck and promote the full range of motion in the shoulder.

At BodyFix Method™, we see clients of all ages with shoulder and neck pain, mainly because of desk and computer work. Surgery won’t “fix” this problem; learning how to move will. Exercises can correct the “local” problem, but we have to remember that sitting puts our bodies at a “global” risk. We also have to remember to do these exercises every day. It’s not hard to do.

We have created a Healthy Office Program that can be purchased, along with others in our Shop.

To readers of this blog, a mini program it is yours for only an email request.

If you would like to have the tools to stay healthy, to look good, and to be free of neck and shoulder pain, please take us up on our offer. You will be glad you did. Just send a request to: info@bodyfixmethod.com and we’ll send you a link to the Marketplace and your free download of this simple, stay-healthy program.

If you feel that you would like to have some professional help, rather than just an exercise or two, go to the web site and make an appointment or call us at (212) 982-2639. We’re available and affordable, and we offer a whole body solution to your soreness or pain issues, a global solution to any local pain problem.

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