4 June 2016

A cure for a chronic sitter

Kirstin Ahmed
Back and postural care
back care, back pain, knee pillow squeezes, lower back pain, lumbar curve, office exercises, seated abductor press, sitting positions
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Brightonfit back pain exercises

We’re all guilty of ‘over sitting’ (yes, that’s a thing); we’re constantly told to be more active in order to be more healthy, and that translates into our working lives too.

This is all true of course, it’s common sense, but let’s be realistic. You’re probably sitting while reading this, I know I was while writing it.

The problem is that sitting causes many of the body’s biological system to shut down and causes muscle groups to waste away. It’s unavoidable though! We all need to sit for some of the time, some more than other perhaps but there’s only so much we can change.

So that leaves us with another option – How to sit better…

When we sit, our hips roll back into flexion, leading to a loss of natural lumbar curve (often leading to back pain). We need to restore this natural curve of the back.

Onto the ‘how’, with the following exercises you will activate key posture muscles and restore function to the; hips and spine. It’s about posture alignment to reduce the symptoms of pain at the source.

Sitting Knee Pillow Squeezes

This exercise introduces the body to the functional sitting position, versus the average slumped-forward position our bodies have become accustomed to. As the name implies, this exercise targets the adductor muscle group of the hips.

Instructions: 

  1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
  2. Place a block or foam roller between your knees.
  3. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back. Hold this position throughout the exercise.
  4. Squeeze and release the block/foam roller with your knees.
  5. Repeat for 3 sets of 20. Be sure to keep your stomach relaxed for the duration of the exercise.

 

Sitting Abductor Presses

Just like sitting knee pillow squeezes, this exercise introduces the body to the functional sitting position. The hip abductor muscle group goes to sleep when we sit. This exercise will force them to wake up.

Instructions: 

  1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
  2. Place a strap around your knees.
  3. Roll your pelvis forward to place a small arch in your low back. Hold this position throughout the exercise.
  4. Press outward against the strap, then release.
  5. Repeat for 3 sets of 20. Be sure to keep your stomach relaxed for the duration of the exercise.

Using these exercises consistently will take you from being at risk of injury to a more healthy body in the long term.

29 January 2016

Working 9 to 5

Kirstin Ahmed
Exercise routine
desk work, flexibility, mobility, muscle stretches, office exercises, rounded shoulders, sitting down at work, tight hip flexors, weak core
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I’ve been there, when you’re not stressing about the work and deadlines, you might get a moment to hate the damage sitting down for hours does to your body.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to choose a job which doesn’t require sitting for many hours during the day, but what you can choose is what you do with the other parts of your day to offset that potential damage.

At Brightonfit we harp on about ‘mobility’ and ‘flexibility’ quite a lot, but with good reason. The more time you spend sat down the more time you must make to stretch. We always carve out time in a session to focus of flexibility, but it needs homework too.

Here’s an idea which might work for some of you. Stretching at your desk might incur the occasional ‘funny look’ but I promise you, say it’s helping your back pain and no boss will want to stop you from preventing a sick day through your own diligence.

A few ideas then:
•       Glute crossover – cross your legs but hug your knee to chest with a twist towards the knee.
•       Hamstring reach – use anything under the desk to prop your straight leg on and reach forward – with your back straight – to use your keyboard
•       Hip flexor sitting – similar to the glute stretch, with heel on knee but push the knee downwards to bring the leg parallel to the floor.

However, within reason this can all be done without drawing too much attention to yourself. First thing is, as I say to all my clients, find out what works for you: what I mean here is there are tons of stretches and variations of stretches out there, best bet is to choose 3 or 4 which work (I.e. hurt like hell) and stick to them – be consistent…once a day is better than 1 solid hour a week when/if you remember to.

If Yoga and Pilates aren’t your cup of tea, that’s fine, forget thoughts of spiritual connections here and remember the reasons for bothering to do this: to become a more supple, stronger and (most importantly) less injury prone human being.

 

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