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Ultimate Hack to Workout at Your Desk
In 2016 I took a desk job after 25 years of working jobs that had me up and moving regularly throughout the day. It didn’t take me long to realize that sitting all day every day brought with it some very serious problems. After just a few weeks I was feeling weaker in my legs, I had soreness in my hips and lower back and I was gaining weight from all the snacking I was doing…
How to workout at your desk
I was finding that after a day at my desk I was feeling tired, lethargic, and run down and that it was getting worse every day. At the time I was 46 and fast approaching 50 so I had real concerns about what shape, literally, my future was going to take.
As I began to research what I could do to feel better at the end of a day at my desk I came across more and more information on the negative health effects of prolonged sitting and a sedentary lifestyle.
The condition is so prevalent and so unhealthy to the entire body that it’s drawing comparisons to smoking.
Medical doctors coined the term “sitting disease” to encompass the negative health effects of prolonged sitting and a sedentary lifestyle.
Sitting Disease
The more I researched the more amazed I became at just how bad prolonged sitting is for us.
According to Get America Standing, Americans sit 10 hours a day on average.
That amount of prolonged sitting brings with it low energy expenditure, slower metabolism, and metabolic syndrome, poor posture, back and spine injuries, early-onset dementia, loneliness and depression, rheumatic disorders, obesity, cardiovascular disease, increased risk of diabetes, and an increased risk of certain forms of cancer among other things.
Anyone of those conditions alone can be life-altering and sitting all day brings an increased risk of all of them.
At that point, I realized I needed to do something to change the way I was behaving at my desk while at work. I tried under desk stationary pedals, dumbbells, and standing desks.
What I found was that no one thing met my body’s needs throughout the day and that I needed to use all of them to feel good at the end of the day. However, having them all at my desk was cumbersome and cluttered as well as expensive.
Staying Active At Your Desk
I began experimenting with bodyweight exercises I could do at my desk and found a long list but each had some drawbacks. Arm exercises that used body weight as resistance were ineffective because I couldn’t do enough and were harmful to my joints.
Leg exercises that used body weight as resistance were very effective but took up too much space, which proved awkward for both myself and the person sitting next to me.
Similarly, chest exercises using my body weight also took up too much space and made me feel not only uncomfortable but unsafe as my desk supported all my weight, threatening to break loose from the cubicle walls.
All in all, I just felt uncomfortable whenever I tried exercising at my desk and that made me not want to do it at all. We all know that exercising can be uncomfortable; no pain, no gain is real, and if given the chance we’ll often avoid exercise.
Those drawbacks were built-in excuses to avoid exercising.
Getting Active When You Can
I began talking to friends who worked desk jobs and learned that none of them had any consistent plan for exercise during their workday. Some walked during breaks, some used stairs instead of elevators and some used the company gym but none did any of these things regularly or even frequently.
Some even joined groups with co-workers with the idea that they would keep each other motivated to walk, take stairs, and work out, which only worked for a little while.
What was missing was a consistent exercise routine; a convenient workout they could do at their desks daily.
Currently, approximately 86% of the U.S. workforce sits at a desk all day.
That equates to approximately 129 million people going to work and sitting at a desk with little or no way to counteract or even slow the negative effects of prolonged sitting.
This prolonged sitting is unhealthy for that workforce and every day people leave their jobs feeling worse than when they arrived, leading to a diminished life outside of work.
I came to the realization that not only were my friends and I looking for help, but soon the country would be facing a national health crisis if nothing was done.
As I continued to look for ways to feel better after a day at my desk I tried using a resistance bands workout.
Although effective I still couldn’t exercise at my desk without putting myself in awkward or compromising positions (aka make myself look foolish) or interfere with my co-workers’ space, so I began the process of creating my own solution.
O.C. (Office Chair) Body Shaper
In early 2017 I hit upon the design for what would become the O.C. (Office Chair) Body Shaper. Through trial and error and several design concepts, I ended up with a safe, portable, effective, and affordable solution that is also fun to use.
The O.C. Body Shaper is a resistance tube-based, zero-impact exercise system designed for use with an office desk chair. Unobtrusive both when in use and not, the Body Shaper is the ultimate office exercise device.
Capable of both upper and lower body exercises, the Body Shaper gives the user the opportunity for a full-body workout that will have them feeling better at the end of each workday and seeing results in just a few short weeks.
Through a program consisting of five core exercises, the O.C. Body Shaper burns fat, builds lean muscle, and raises your heart rate right at your desk.
Triceps extension, Shoulder Press, Lateral Raise, Leg Extension, and Standing Kickback make up the Body Shaper “Core Five” exercises.
Each targets a specific body area or muscle group that plays a major role in the overall shape we present to the world and working them daily also contributes to an increase in overall health and fitness level.
Consistent Activity Is Key
Regular, consistent use of the O.C. Body Shaper impacts your body and mind in several positive ways in just a few short weeks. Anaerobic exercise, exercise with resistance, has been shown to stimulate the release of chemicals in the brain called endorphins.
Endorphins create a euphoric feeling that improves your mood and overall sense of well-being.
When you combine that feeling with the physical effects of building lean muscle, burning fat, and raising your heart rate that come with resistance exercise you get a combined mind & body routine that can change your life.
The best thing about the O.C. Body Shaper, besides the way it can make you look and feel, is its convenience. The number one reason people don’t work out, or stop working out, is a lack of time. Check it out in this video:
Wrap-Up
When your options for a solid, full-body workout consist of before work, after work, or at lunch, it’s easy to see why people have a hard time finding the motivation. Most people don’t want to get up at 5 am, skip lunch or stay up until midnight to work out.
The beauty of the O.C. Body Shaper is that it fits seamlessly into your day.
The ability to work out at work solves the problem of time because you’re already there every day, and probably will be for years to come, making it the perfect device to improve your physical and mental health while you also improve your financial health.
Happy exercising and get busy living!
- The Ultimate Hack for Desk Exercises - September 15, 2019
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