Do you ever get a feeling of numbness in your body after sitting for a long time? Does your back pain when you try to move?
Exercise is a very important part of our daily life. It has great benefits on the body and has different effects according to the targeted area of exercise. Still, many people tend to avoid exercise; the reasons can be different for each individual. Some might have busy schedules so they don’t get enough time to exercise.
While some just don’t do it on account of laziness. Though the ill effects of not exercising might not show up on your body when you are young, as you grow old it starts taking a toll on your body, hindering your movements and making you weak.
Just being idle for the whole day might damage your body more when compared to not exercising at all.
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Why is Exercise Important For Our Body?
Exercising is just like working your body out. The muscles in your body are made to support and help your body to move and maintain balance.
If they are not used regularly, they might get weak or loose thus impacting your body structure and abilities. Moreover, only normal daily movements and activities might not prove much helpful since they do not test your muscles to the fullest.
Proper workouts are needed to keep the muscles toned and healthy. Just like food helps you to be alive, similarly, exercise helps your muscles to be in good shape.
A healthy body can very easily be achieved by doing daily exercise. It helps to control and maintain the hormonal changes happening in your body and helps you to stay healthy even when you start to grow old.
In this modern world, people are more inclined towards desk jobs rather than field jobs. This requires sitting all day on a seat in front of a computer. In a short span, it might not look much troublesome but in the long run, it just makes your body stiff and your muscles hard.
Sitting for more hours leaves your muscles dormant and it starts to stiffen them. Even when you try to stand up and try to move your muscles refuse to fire up like earlier and you find yourself in a position of stiffness and find it hard to move without causing pain or numbness. Such a kind of routine can result in heavy damage to your body in the future if not prevented.
What Can Be Done To Save Your Body?
Exercising is the best way to maintain a healthy body. But you can’t exercise the whole day or at least you can’t exercise whenever you want considering the busy routines nowadays.
For some people sitting at a particular place is a necessity for their jobs and they can’t do much about it. So to get your muscles relaxed and make them healthy even while just sitting at a place or when in the office you can try some special exercises which are easy to perform, don’t require much space to perform and will help you to maintain a healthy body.
5 Exercises to Offset Sitting All Day
Leg Swinging
This is a very small but very effective exercise you can carry out whenever you want. This does not require much space or any kind of special preparation. Many times due to continuous sitting, you get strain in your legs and the blood flow decreases in the legs.
To start, just stand up at your place and raise your one leg a bit. Now slowly start moving your leg in to and fro motion for 5 minutes slowly. Then slightly take your leg upwards and now swing it sideways for minutes.
Repeat the same exercise with the other leg too. This exercise is very helpful to get rid of stiffness in the legs and increases blood flow. Do not force the legs to swing, just let them loose and try to hang them, and then move in an above-described manner.
Squatting
Sitting for more hours can make your knees painful and hard for you to walk, this where squatting can be very helpful. The squatting position is just like a baseball player leaning downwards to catch the ball. It is very easy to perform, start with standing on your legs.
Now spread them a bit away from each other. Now slowly try to bend down as you would do if you would be trying to sit on a chair. Once successfully
Planking
Planking is an exercise that looks more like push-ups but it is a bit different. To start getting down in the position required for push-ups is to get down on all four and stretch your legs.
Now take your legs a bit apart and make your body straight in position. Now bend your both knees and try to touch the ground without bending your body much.
So unlike moving your whole body down, you just have to bend your knees and touch the ground with the knee caps. This process helps to improve blood flow in your whole body especially the back and thighs.
Do it 20-35 times and then stop. Too much of this can lead to fatigue so do as much as you can do but only without putting in too much effort.
The Glute Bridge
The glute bridge is a great exercise to give relief to your abdomen and pelvic muscles which get strained due to continuous sitting. This exercise might need you to clear the floor a bit as you need to lie down. So to start with, lie down on the floor on your back and keep your arms on the side of your body. Now join your legs and pull them back towards your abdomen.
Now using your feet as a stand, try to pull up your abdomen in the air as much as you can, stay there for 2 seconds and then take it back towards the ground. Repeat the process about 10-15 times and then lie on the ground while leaving your legs loose.
This exercise will help to improve the blood flow in your legs, thighs, and lower part of the stomach. It will also help to get rid of aches due to continuous sitting
In-place Jumping
This is the easiest exercise on the list. By the name itself, you can guess how this exercise goes but to elaborate, you have to stand straight on the ground. Now shift your legs a bit apart so that they don’t touch each other.
Now bend down like you do while squatting taking your hands down with you. Now like a spring, bounce back and try to go in the air as high as possible using your hands to pull you up further.
Repeat the process 10-15 times and then sit down on the ground till your breathing rate returns to normal. This exercise activates all your body muscles and improves blood flow in the whole body. Try not to overdo it as it can cause tiredness.
Conclusion
Modern-day life has left many of us without enough time to care for our bodies and thus it is resulting in the degradation of our health day by day. Many of us still manage to exercise daily but the desk jobs and the continuous sitting sessions in front of the computer screens cancel out all the effects of the exercise.
But even if you don’t get enough time for exercise or want to use your free office time to the fullest, you can try these small and quick exercises to keep your body healthy and fit. Here are 5 exercises to offset sitting all day:
- Stand straight at your place and swing your legs one by one to and fro and then sideways.
- Spread your legs a bit apart and then try to go in a position as if you are trying to sit on an imaginary chair.
- Go into a push-up position and try to bend your knees and touch the ground.
- Lay down on your back on the ground and try to pull up your abdomen in the air.
- Stand straight at your position and jump as high as you can.
Try these small exercises and keep yourself fit and healthy even if your schedule doesn’t permit you to do so.
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