How sitting ruins your life
Posted on November 9, 2014
Why do you feel sore after sitting all day at work? While muscles are shutoff from their job of keeping proper alignment or maintaining you upright, the forces of gravity are harming your spine. The spine will not feel tired the way a muscle will after prolonged use however, they do get damaged and compressed. Once somebody begins to feel pain in their backs, the damage has already been done. If we go higher up the spine we find that a familiar hunched forward (kyphotic) upper spine has developed leaving you prone to shoulder impingement or injury. In addition, the neck and upper back muscles will get pretty tense. Does this sound familiar? If it does you might benefit from some sitting rehab.
A program of exercises and stretches to do after sitting looks to address the typical issues that come after long period of being seated. When sitting for a long time the hip flexors shorten and tighten. When returning to standing, the pelvis tips forward and result in compression and painful irritation of the lower spine. The hip flexors need to be lengthened and “soften” with self-myofascial releases like foam rolling and stretching. Next the glutes we sit on get numb and are unable to work appropriately. Rolling the glutes on a foam roller will help increase blood flow. Exercise like glute bridges will help activate them, which is a good place to start. What typically happens is that the hamstrings and muscles of the lower back have usually adapted to these inhibited glutes by becoming shorter and tighter. This further increases the stress on the lower back. Strengthening the glutes is the most important thing to do, it’s also a good idea to work on relaxing the hamstrings and lower back with exercise and self-myofascial releases.
Re-establishing core strength with good posture and working out the muscles that are lengthened and inhibited from the hunched and rounded shoulder posture of sitting is the next focus of the exercise program.
At the minimum, the stretches of hip flexors and quads and the glute bridges are the minimum requirement to do daily if you sit most of the day. One of the main goals is to build a good mind-muscle connection and try to flex and force the body to use the glutes in these exercises.
A note of caution, if any of the exercises (typically the single leg deadlift) causes more tightness and pain in the lower back, discontinue and revisit in the future. The exercise is meant to force the glute to work and hamstring to lengthen however sometimes we develop a stubborn compensatory pattern of using the lower back instead. In time, the body relearns proper movement mechanics( if we help it).
