After a full on week at work do you, like me, find yourself stretching your neck and shoulders and twisting your torso in an attempt to restore your body to its less hunched and scrunched up state? I'm sure I'm not the only one and recently it's been in the press that office workers must exercise for an hour a day to counter death risk. While we all know we're going to go at some point - as my mum says, that's the one certainty we have - there is much advice on how we should live better, more enriched lives. Everywhere.
This post isn't a "you should do this kind of post", because I'm sure we've all read lots like that and quite frankly, for many of us we agree with it, nod along and then life gets in the way again. That's what makes me think it's about the little changes we make that can have lasting impacts.
And on that hour a day of exercise thing, I'm currently feeling quite smug as my new walking commute takes me about that. I wrote how I'd upped my step count from an average of 2,000 steps a day to the recommended 10,000 when I started my new job.
Now, it's a couple of weeks later and I'm still walking to work every day. I've not braved the bike yet, but I will now the weather is cooling a bit. Although they've forecast temperatures of 30 degrees again next week, but I'm not complaining! And even though it's a relatively new change to my routine, I think if my walking commute were to stop completely I'd miss it. And that's in four weeks.
What else is noticeable is that quite often I'm walking more than 10,000 steps a day and on Tuesday this week, I hit my all time high of over 16,000 steps. And even better my legs didn't ache. How amazing is that? I've found that I'm also a little disappointed if my step counter doesn't hit five digits in a day - yes I know I need to get out more...
It really does show that we adapt quickly.
But anyway, back to the yoga. Even with my hour of exercise a day, I still feel the need to unscrunch myself at the end of the week. So when the team at Furniture at Work shared their #OfficeYoga infographic it really made me think, why wait until the end of the week, or even until the end of the day?
I know my crunch points are my shoulders and lower back, my workspace along with the other office desks are set up so they're optimised for the people that use them. I strongly believe there's no point being uncomfortable at your desk, because we spend a good part of our day there. And repeatedly sitting out of alignment will have an impact on our body.
I know that cat stretches are good for my back, and thinking about doing one (or more) while seated on my chair is entirely do-able. I mean it's not the sort of thing you need full gym kit for is it? And having tried it at work this week, it's not something that makes you look a right lemon in the middle of the office either. I think the male constituent of the office might have thought me a little strange, but I also think they probably didn't even notice!
The other stretch that really works for me is the Spinal Twists. Twisting my torso from side to side helps me restore the space between my vertebrae - or that's how I imagine it anyway. I know I sit taller and my posture is better afterwards. And little and often, isn't that what we're told?
Would you do yoga moves in the office? Which ones, either from those below or others you've adapted work for you?
This is a collaborative post with Furniture at Work, but all views and opinions are my own.
