23 May The Wear & Tear From Your Office Chair
Warning: Your Office Can Cause Critical Harm!
You could staple your finger to that report! Get a paper cut on a post-it! Become involved in a wrestling match with a coworker over the last cup of coffee in the pot! You could even sit for hours on end in a chair that could harm the way you stand and walk for the rest of your life!
Do I have your attention now? Good!
Now, let’s get serious about the dangers that office workers face. Sitting in your chair every day without the counterbalance of some physical activity can cause you serious harm.
Your Body Isn’t Designed For Sitting
Most people have lost the ability to move correctly and sitting at desks in front of computers is the culprit! This seemingly normal activity can cause muscle imbalance, poor posture, and, subsequently, bad movement patterns during exercise. Researchers have found that sitting for more than ½ the day, doubles the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular problems!
Sitting for long periods is bad because the human body was not designed to be idle. Think about how back in the day that people had to constantly work outside to plant and grow their own crops or head out to track and hunt their food. Even in the 19th and early 20th centuries, office workers like clerks, accountants, and managers generally stood. What does Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, and Ernest Hemingway all have in common? Yes… you guessed it, they were all steadfast standers as they became pioneers in their field. They weren’t sitting idly waiting for a screen to load or for Netflix to play the next episode. Although those activities can be a part of your day, they need to be balanced with something to get you back on your feet. Lack of movement slows metabolism, reducing the amount of food that is converted to energy and thus promoting fat accumulation, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and more!
Activate Your Muscles
You don’t have to be a marathon runner or a professional lifter to be active. The trend to train like an athlete and focus on improving performance is growing, but that doesn’t mean you have that available in your schedule. You work! You have kids! You have Netflix! There’s a life outside of the gym!
Simply more movement can increase your overall well-being. The more you move, “the more likely you are to have less fat, more muscle, better cardio, and impressive flexibility,” says Mark Cheng, Ph.D., a human performance specialist in Los Angeles.
This can include taking the stairs instead of the elevator or even just getting up from your desk and taking a walk during lunch. If you really, truly, don’t have that as an option, just stand more at your desk! Studies suggest just doing that can lower your risk of obesity, illness and other internal damage. It’s these little steps that can make a difference, even if the difference is quite a bit smaller compared to what you would gain from a more active workout session.
An Answer Can Be Found In Class
How do you think people can combat these evil chairs? Don’t worry – this isn’t a trick question. The answer is in the classroom… well, exercise classroom.
Group Personal Training Programs are a great way to have fun with friends while providing a solution for what’s bringing your body down. Geared for 6-20 people, a Group Training program gives you all the benefits of a personal trainer, but with the energy of a large group. Formulated with a healthy combination of strength training, cardio, and metabolic conditioning, Faster Fitness offers an effective, all-around program geared toward making you stronger, leaner, and more energized.
Movement-focused exercise is super popular right now on TV with shows like American Ninja Warrior. These obstacle courses use a variety of methods to get your heart rate going and multiple muscles firing. While Faster Fitness won’t make you run up a vertical wall or swing across a pool of water, we incorporate a range of activities that build strength, stamina, and mobility while making training feel less like work and more like play!
These activities incorporate something called compound movements. They utilize multiple muscle groups. Examples of these would be power cleans, squats, overhead presses, and deadlifts, where you use multiple joints and muscles at once.
People who feel pressure by the idea of personal training or simply don’t want to pay a higher price for it often sign up for boot camps or exercise classes such as ours so that they can work out with others who have similar goals in a more playful group setting. But boot camps, which boomed through the past decade, present a problem of one size- fits-all approach. When everybody in the class more or less does the same workout, individual weaknesses are rarely targeted. That holds clients back from achieving their goals.
The Group Training at Faster Fitness is focused more on the individuals and their individual weaknesses or strengths. It’s a system more akin to what martial arts studios have done for hundreds of years already. Everybody trains in the same room, but you get the personal attention you would need from a teacher so that you can reach your own goals! That way, in the end, everybody is at the head of the class.
What Are You Waiting For? Get Up! Stand Up! Sign Up!
The moment you sit, your muscles begin to go silent. But in spite all of the studies, many of us still spend most of the day on our butts. That’s why it’s time to roll that office chair to the corner of the room. Enough is enough! Stand up because your body needs it, and sign up for a class to get your body moving!
