Hours at the computer desk tinkering on your keyboard and mousepad. Attending class while listening and take notes at a lecture. Catching up on phone calls and texts at home. Conversations at the coffee shop or on lunch break. These activities are usually followed by a trip to our automobile where we sit down and venture home. We sit down to conduct intellectual production in our everyday lives just to get ready to sit down some more. Our rides home are usually accommodated with autopilot driving scenarios.
Nine out of ten times we have our way home mapped out immediately after turning the ignition on in our cars. Our post-work ride home rituals follow a prolonged static body shape. Our bodies re-enter a static position while we mosey on home in our mechanical carriages. The time we spend on static body activities before our day ends, followed by more sitting in our cars, includes positions leading to underused joints and muscle groups causing injury, mobility restrictions, and annoying pain causing symptoms. The front of our necks shorten as we peer down at phones for texting on our three by five-inch cell phone screens, typing emails, or writing important notes. Shoulders roll forward as we lean our elbows on table tops during coffee and lunch conversations, shortening pectoral muscles and compressing the anterior compartment of the shoulder joints. The low back can round as we stay static in any seating position, causing compression in lumbar vertebrae and shortening the area between the crests of our hips and ribs. This can potentially lead to tight hip flexors and lower back pain.
Our beginning personal training clients present these suboptimal body ailments. Usually, this is caused by repetitive prolonged time sitting in one position in our everyday lives. The solution is to keep moving and avoiding stationary positions. A fun and challenging tactic we prescribe to our personal training clients is “stop light exercises.” Since we do nothing but sit and wait for car rides to be over, perhaps we can make the most of our time as we wait for red lights to turn green. Since the wheels in our automobile aren’t moving, this is a great time to direct our concentration toward a few movements to give our body some much needed TLC.
Here are few exercises to perform while waiting at stop lights:
- Right and left lateral cervical flexion: With strong posture and ears in line with the spine, gently tilt your ear toward your shoulder stretching out the side of your neck. Hold this position to where a brief stretching sensation is experienced for about a second. Perform the same movement to the opposite side of the body. Perform five to ten repetitions or until the light turns green.
- Scapular protraction and retraction: With the forehead facing forward and ears in line with the spine, pull the shoulder blades backward along the rib cage until a brief muscular contraction in sensed in the muscles surrounding the shoulder blades and thoracic spine. Reverse this motion forward gliding the shoulder blades forward along the rib cage. “Flex and hold” the muscles around the shoulder blades in each position for about a second. Perform five to ten repetitions or until the light turns green.
- Posterior and anterior pelvic tilts: Sitting with strong posture in your car seat, line the midline of your ribs up with your ears and the middle of the crest of your hips. “Roll” the crest of the hip forward toward the front of your rib cage and flex and hold the abdominal muscles. Reverse “roll” your hips in the opposite direction. Perform five to ten repetitions or until the light turns green.
Filling latent periods of sitting with consistently practiced corrective exercise can assists in decreasing pain and propositions of injuries form prolonged sitting. Simple adjustments applied in everyday activity such as driving are just some small, yet powerful, adaptations to refine our lifetime fitness journey.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
