How to Exercise While Sitting

Long hours seated in a chair is bad for your health

If you sit in a chair a lot, your hips are probably quite tight. 

That means:

• Your hip flexor muscles (responsible for flexing the hip, or drawing the knees to your chest, and moving your legs front-to-back and side-to-side) become shortened.
• This causes tightness in the hips and reduced range of motion

Which eventually leads to 

• Hip pain
• Lower back pain
• Pelvic tilting
• Knee problems - because your walking and running gait gets affected, causing strain to the knees

If that prospect doesn't appeal to you, you could consider doing the following:

Begin with One Small Change, then Proceed to a More Challenging Exercise

If you're usually sitting in a chair throughout the day, I recommend one small change that you could make to start taking care of your body in a simple way. Plus, you can multitask while doing that simple, one-minute exercise!

If you find "sitting cross-legged on the floor" too easy, you're ready for a more challenging "sitting exercise" (haha). This is the installment that I promised in my previous blog post.

Stretching Your Thigh Muscles 

In this exercise, we will gently stretch the inner thigh muscles and open the hips. In doing so, we will 

• improve the blood circulation to the hips and knees, and 
• gradually increase the range of motion of the joints as the suppleness of the hip and knee joints improves

(In short, we're keeping the joints healthy.)

Because this exercise is done in a gentle manner, it means that we can do it for a longer period. When we give the muscles time to slowly stretch, they can stretch more.

It's Also Multi-Tasking Friendly

Too busy to exercise? No time to exercise?

No worries, this is yet another multi-tasking friendly exercise. You can do this while watching TV, or reading... Anytime when you can sit on the floor.

If you don't care for it, ignore the funky name. As Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, "A rose, by any other word, would smell as sweet." So... just enjoy the "pose" (couldn't resist the pun).

Here we go... Do let me know in the comments how it goes for you.

Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose, Butterfly Pose)

1. Sit with your legs straight out in front of you, ankles and knees together, and your weight equally distributed on both sitting bones and spine upright.
2. Bend your knees and bring your heels toward your pelvis.
3. Then, relax and allow your knees to drop out to the sides, pressing the soles of your feet together.
4. Bring your heels as close to your pelvis as you comfortably can, without rounding your back. 

   
   

   Sit with the soles of your feet touching and knees pointing away from each other

   
   
5. Inhale, raise your arms up from the side, bringing your upper arms next to your ears. Lengthen your spine upwards.
6. As you exhale, fold forward and allow your palms to touch the floor in front of you.
7. Inhale, lengthen your spine forward. As you exhale, relax and allow your upper body to go closer to the floor.
8. Bring your chin towards your chest and relax your neck.
9. Stay in this position for 1 to 5 minutes, as long as you feel comfortable.

   

    To deepen the stretch, bend forward and reach forward

    
10. To exit this position, look in front, point your arms forward with your upper arms next to your ears.
11. Inhale and suck in your belly to engage your abdominal muscles (this protects your back), and come up.
12. Bring your arms down, then straighten the legs out.

Benefits

• Stretches the inner thighs, groins, and knees.
• Opens up and relaxes the hip joints.
• The pressure on your abdomen area in this forward bend stimulates the abdominal organs, and helps to improve digestion.
• The forward-bending position has a calming effect.

Stay Safe 

• Never force your knees down. Instead release the heads of the thigh bones toward the floor. The knees will follow. 
• If your knees are very high or your back rounded, don’t bend forward. Just sit upright and focus on your breathing to release the tension in your hip joints. Sitting on a high support (e.g. a cushion, a thick book, or a folded blanket) will help. 
• Do not use force to bring the upper body closer to the floor. When force is used, the muscles contract instead and you risk injuring yourself. 
• Unlike what the name (“butterfly”) suggests, do not bob your knees up and down. Just keep them relaxed during the entire process.
• A more relaxing way to do this is to have your feet further away from your groin area, forming a larger angle between your upper and lower legs.