Exercise While You Work
Build Mobility, Flexibility and Strength at the Office with These Tips and a Special Challenge!
At the ripe middle age of thirty-nine, I am nearly as flexible and mobile as I was during my stint as a high school varsity wrestler, when I could practically contort myself into a pretzel-like pose (OK, fine, maybe I am about 75% as flexible/mobile nowadays!). I credit this to my incorporation of stretching and mobility exercises within my daily routine. In order for me to consistently perform at my best level, I need to ensure that I’m utilizing my joints in diverse enough ways. I don’t just save mobility and stretching for active rest days, I incorporate it into the very fabric of my non-gym work and leisure time.
When I’m not officially in a training session, I stay mobile by frequently engaging in various forms of movement and shifting my body around to keep it loose. We are not meant to sit on chairs at desks for hours at a time, yet that is unfortunately what is required of many of us in order to make a living. Standing for long periods of time with minimal variance in movement is also not ideal. This is because being stationary causes our working muscles to remain tense, which causes them to become weak and doesn’t allow them to receive proper blood circulation. This leads to inflammation of the veins and very stiff joints, which results in various kinds of pain, such as leg cramps and clotting.
Even if you have a fairly stringent desk job, you can still develop a routine that creates variance in how your body is situated and utilized throughout the day. I’ve seen some really creative ideas for prompting exercise at work, such as people putting pull up bars on their office door. This reminds them to do a few reps as they come and go.
You can try a few of the following exercises when you are at your desk. In addition to breaking up the monotony of the work day and adding some fitness into the work week, I bet you will notice a boost in your overall efficiency and energy.
Upper Body Twist:
Twisting is a great way to build and maintain flexibility. The upper body twist is an exercise you can do in your chair to increase your upper body strength and elasticity.
To begin, sit upright with your feet flat on the floor. Then cross your arms and reach for your shoulders forming an X over your chest. Turn your upper body as far to the left as is comfortable. Do not move your hips. Hold this position for three seconds and then repeat the exercise on the right side. Perform this movement for ten or fifteen reps.
V-Sit Leg Extension on Chair:
This exercise is quite simple, which is great because you can do it frequently and without having to alter your workspace too much. The V-sit leg extension is an abdominal exercise that builds core strength and balance, two essential facets of good mobility.
Start by sitting towards the front of the chair (but not too far that you lose balance) with your back straight. Lean back ever so slightly while holding onto the sides of the chair with your hands for stability. Keep your legs straight and pressed together and pull them up off of the floor so that they are elevated at a forty five degree angle. Your body should resemble the shape of the letter V. Hold this position for at least twenty seconds.
Straight Legs on Chair with Flutter Kicks:
This exercise is a variation on the aforementioned exercise. It includes a dynamic mobility component to get your heart rate working at a nice steady state. You assume the same position as the V-sit leg extension lift and start flutter kicking, which is done by moving your feet up and and down, kind of like you are swimming in air. Make sure that you move your chair away from the desk or any elevated work surface so you have room to let your legs work!
Both variations of this exercise can also be done on the floor, or any flat surface. You could even do them up on your desk if you are one of those rare people who has a clutter free workstation!
I suggest performing between fifteen and twenty flutter kicks per set.
Desk Lean and Wall Lean:
Take a phone call, write an email, schedule a meeting and then get up and do a desk lean! Adding this strength building mobility exercise to your workflow will give you the adrenaline you need to (potentially) skip that mid-afternoon cup of coffee!
Start by standing up so that you face your desk. Then place your palms flat on the surface and lean against it, with your hands slightly wider than your shoulders and your arms straight. Lower yourself until your chest almost reaches your desk, then return to the starting position. Start by doing ten repetitions. You can do this periodically throughout your workday. For example, make a habit of doing a desk lean anytime you get up from the desk.
If you have trouble doing push ups, the desk lean movement will be a useful foundation to help you develop good form and strength in your arms, chest and shoulders! It is actually a tried and true push up modification. You can also do these leans on the wall, i.e. a wall push up. Place both hands on the wall, a shoulder’s width apart. Step back from the wall with your feet, keep your body straight while tightening your core and glutes. Then bend your elbows and bring your chest towards the wall. Repeat for a set of ten repetitions.
Chair Squats:
Squats are an incredible exercise for your entire body. The chair squat is a far lower leverage version of the type you’d see done by bodybuilders and calisthenics practitioners in the gym. They are so simple and accessible that you can do these any time of day. Just stand up from your chair and lower your body back down, but make sure to stop right before your butt would normally hit the chair. Then stand back up again and repeat the movement twenty times each set. Try to make a habit of doing a set whenever you get up from, or return to your chair.
Try and make a routine of performing these exercises throughout the workday, or any time when you’re finding yourself being too sedentary.
The Artfully Exercising Writing Workout Challenge:
As a bonus feature to this segment, I am presenting you with a challenge. As you may know (because you are reading a Substack), I am a writer, editor and writing coach, so I spend a lot of time staring at screens and typing on the keyboard. Writing can be very ruminative and sometimes stifling, so not only does this exercise break up the intensity of word processing, it will ensure that your body is also working as hard as your mind.
Here’s the challenge:
When writing an email, a report or any document for work, school or personal reasons, stop after each sentence and perform a word count. Then choose from either chair squats, desk/wall leans or V-sit flutter kicks. The number of words you’ve typed is the number of repetitions you will do of the exercise you chose. So for example, my first sentence from this paragraph, “when writing an email….,” contains a grand total of twenty-four words, so I would take a break from writing and pump out twenty-four chair squats/desk leans or V-sit flutter kicks.
Keep repeating this process for each sentence you write. The amount of reps will certainly vary each set based on how wordy your sentences are. So essentially this challenge will test both your vocabulary and endurance!
You might want to vary up the exercises so that after writing your first sentence you do squats, after the second sentence you do desk/wall leans and then a round of V-sit kicks after the third sentence…And so on until you have finished writing.
Let me know how it goes! And please feel free to share any other exercises and movements you do to ensure you’re getting enough physical activity while grinding it out for the corporate overlords.