From lower-back aches to stiff hips and slumped shoulders, prolonged sitting takes a toll. These simple exercises can help you stand taller and move better
WORDS: Rhys Thomas PICS: Shutterstock
Are you sitting comfortably? It might seem that way, but for those of us who spend the bulk of our waking day at a desk, there might be more damage going on than is immediately clear. Prolonged desk sitting, as has been well documented, is associated with slower metabolism and elevated cardiovascular disease risks, but it can also affect mobility quite significantly. And no, not even your fancy ergonomic chair will completely stop that.
If you’re living with aches, discomforts, and experiencing days of DOMs despite knowing you’re not pushing yourself unsustainabily hard in the gym, it might well be due to the posture, and mobility issues that crop up with having to sit at the desk all day. Key giveaways that this might be the issue you’ve been overlooking include knee soreness, lower back aches, and finding your stance pokes your stomach out, and your back arches (i.e you have anterior pelvic tilt).
Jake Blundell, aka @elastaboy is on a mission to help people correct their flexibility and mobility, amassing two million followers on Instagram in the process. Recently, he put up a breakdown of the essential movements needed to “reverse these compensation patterns”. Here’s the low-down:
Why you have an anterior pelvic tilt
A sedentary lifestyle, forced by the ‘rat race’ or otherwise, can lead to muscle imbalances. This happens in two main ways: our hip flexors and lower back extensors shorten and tighten if we’re in these positions for prolonged periods of time, which pulls the pelvis downward and forward.
This forwards-pull could in theory be saved by the glutes, hamstrings, and abdominals, which help to stabalise our pelvis. However, these positions also mean we tend not to use these muscles, so they weaken through a lack of use (our glutes, particularly the gluteus medius, can essentially forget how to fire, along with our hip rotators) and therefore don’t take the load of the pelvis.
As well as the clear visual difference this brings, it is the reason we tend to feel tight in our lower back, hips, and find our knees are giving us grief (especially when laying down to sleep). Fortunately, the fixes are fairly simple – if a long-term goal.
The exercises for fixing “9-5” body
90-90 hip stretch
The 90-90 stretch helps to open up muscles surrounding the hip capsule, from glutes and flexors to hip abductors, and adductors (even the piriformis and psoas, if you’ve heard of those), making it a complete essential for relieving lowerback pain, and helping to correct all of those hours of compression the al desko lifestyle provides.
While doing the stretch, the key is to resist the urge to bend to one side. Thirty seconds on each side for three reps is great but try to hold it for a minute on each side, two to three times. Deep breathing will help. According to Healthline “completing this sequence just 2 times per week will help your hip mobility in just 1–2 months.”
Hip CARs
CAR stands for Controlled Articular Rotation and is a movement that takes your hip through its entire range of motion (which, trust us, you will realise is being sorely neglected at the moment). Jason Avakian from Kinetic Sports Rehab has a good demonstration below.
There’s a standing variant too, but for pure mobility reasons, the kneeling position works well. The key is to ensure you’re going through the range of motion slowly and with complete control. Three sets of five on each side, forwards and backwards, will be quite the workout, and very worth your time.
Cossack squats
Squats are the king of exercises, we know this. The cossack variant is a powerhouse when it comes to hip, knee, and ankle mobility, as well as targeting glutes and abductors. It’s uni-lateral, which is great for imbalances too. For a beginner, or if mobility is especially bad we’d recommend doing these near a pole or wall that you can use to re-balance, on the advanced side feel free to add a kettlebell and progressively overload from there. Eight controlled reps on each side is a good set.
Kneeling lunges
Make sure you’re driving the hip forward and that you can feel your glute engaging on the back leg. Simple. 30 seconds on each side, for three rounds. You can in theory add weight to this, but the bodyweight version is completely adequate, and probably a better starting point.
Glute bridges
Finally, those glutes are pesky to train, but it will make a dramatic difference. Lay on your back, plant your feet into the floor and slowly thrust up your lower body, making sure the glutes are pulling you off the ground. Hold it at the comfortable-ish top of your range for a couple seconds, three sets of ten is great, three sets of 15 is greater.
The importance of mind muscle connection
The brain is a weird mysterious thing. When it comes to mind-muscle connections though, we really ought to embrace the ‘woo-ness’ of it all. Especially when training neglected areas of the body, it is good to do what we can to ensure the right part of the body is firing – and not those overcompensated muscles we are trying to help.
A good way to do this with these exercises is to first do some movements that involve laying on your back and keeping your lower-back in contact with the ground. If your lower back is touching the ground, you’re not arching. Deadbugs are great for this, as are figure-four stretches.
The world might mean we have to be at the desk, and that sitting isn’t good for our body, but these exercises can help us to correct our posture, mobility and form; helping us to feel more agile, less sore, and to ensure we aren’t putting undue stress on parts of our body now, and in future. Now that’s good work.
