Our Personal Training Clients that we manage at Napa Tenacious Fitness have careers such as busy executive, event coordinators or managers in which their day can include anything from doing administrative work, to being a writer, to sitting down and having meetings all day. The drawback of sitting all the time means that the potential to be sedentary is increased. We all know that sedentary positions can lead to detrimental effects in our Life Time Fitness such as the increase risk for cardiovascular disease, increased risk of diabetes, and increased risk of becoming overweight. We can even look at sedentary movement being just as bad as having a really bad smoking habit!
Periods of being sedentary throughout the day can lead to a lack of physical activity which will lead to excess weight gain and decreased lean muscle growth. In addition when staying in a seated position for a long period of time, you can also get symptoms of atrophy in which muscles of the back, upper shoulder, and hip and knee joints get stiff… Leading to symptoms of pain and decreasing the desire to move.
An effective solution that we coach at Napa Tenacious Fitness for our Personal Training clients is to be mindful about how important it is to get up from a seated position and move on a consistent bases. There are a few things we can do to improve our physical activity throughout the day so that we can positively influence our weight loss goals, decrease the likelihood of injuries occurring, and improve activity overall throughout the day in order to keep the mind acute and constantly aware, encouraging a positive state of mind throughout the day.
A tactic that has proven to be very successful with our Personal Training Clients to improve their fitness and encourage weight loss in Napa have been to set reminders for every 30 minutes, perform 3 minutes of exercise. For instance, after performing some work at the desk for 30-60 minutes, it will beneficial to get up move a little!
This mode of exercise could be a simple task, such as performing a squat, or doing some push-ups against the wall, or simply taking a walk around the building or the room.
This is an example how the day could look from 9 AM to Noon before lunch implementing the 30:3 “work time”-to-“get up and move time” method we teach our Personal Training Clients in Napa.
9:00 AM-9:30 AM- Arrive at work… say to hi people. Sit down and get ready to start the day!
9:30 AM: Start to do some administrative worm (could be phone calls and/or answering email)
10:00 AM: Stand up and perform 4 neck stretches (you can see the Dynamic Stretching Routine for the neck that we teach our Personal Clients here: https://youtu.be/68HFrKEOt_w)
10:03 AM- Sit back down… and do more “insert administrative task”
10:35 AM- Stand Up! Walk down the hall way. Give someone a high five.
10:38- Sit back down… type away!
11:11 AM – Stand up, Perform 10 1/2 squats!
11:14 AM- Sit back down and do what you do best at that desk or go to the meeting!
11:44 AM-12 PM- Tie up any loose ends before you head out to lunch and get ready to go to lunch and do this all over again until your day is over!
Implementing the technique of getting up and doing something that takes no more than 3 minutes involving a form of physical activity will keep the body in a healthier state. Even 3 minutes movement every 30 minutes will help positively influence weight loss progress and battle the detrimental effects that sedentary activity threatens to impose! Our jobs these days require a lot of sitting (yours truly included… writing this BLOG article and posting it took a little time!). Let’s work to ensure that we don’t let the detrimental effects of sitting too long hinder our Life Time Fitness Goals!
