Playful Rooted

Like so many of us these days, I went straight from college to working at an 8-5 desk job. As we all know, that experience is demanding and stressful in many ways, but one of the worst parts of working a desk job is what it does to your body. It’s terrible on your spine, your wrists, and your eyes, and we’ve all read those reports that sitting for six hours a day will surely kill you.

Our bodies are made to move! Ideally, we would be engaged in low-level activity all day, like our much fitter ancestors. We’d be walking, running, carrying things, and performing physical work to sustain our communities. This is what our bodies were built for. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us don’t have any option these days. We work at desks because that’s how the world does business.

So what can we do about it?

Of course, we can take the stairs and park further from the door and incorporate a walk into our lunch hour. But what if we took it up a notch and stayed semi-active throughout the day? Surely we’d feel a lot better, stay focused for longer periods of time, and not experience as many of the after-work aches and pains that we all feel after a long day at our desks.

With that in mind, I created this easy Workday Workout. This workout includes a set of exercises that you can perform anywhere. If you work in a fun, casual environment (lucky you!), you can do these at your desk or in your office or cubicle. If you don’t (sorry!)… you can do these in a stairwell or even a bathroom stall! (As a professional at stealthy fitness, I speak from experience.)

Set a calendar alert to go off at the start or end of every hour, and take 5-10 minutes to stretch your legs and get your heart pumping. You’ll burn some calories, feel great, and develop a nice rosy glow. 🙂

Don’t worry if you can’t do all the reps (or even all the exercises!). Just do what you can, and try to do a little bit better the next time. If you need any clarification on the moves, check out the links below the workout.

crossfit squat | standing bicycle crunch | front lunge | standing kickback
calf raise | triceps pushback | wall sit | plié squat

Hope you enjoy!

French expression of the day
et patati, et patata – And so on and so forth