The Sitting Fix
A practical protocol to offset the harms of too much sitting (it's awesome for road trips).
Post summary
I recently drove across the country, which required a lot of sitting.
To offset all the sitting, I did a quick movement routine and four specifically-tailored stretches during stops.
The routine is fast, simple, not embarrassing to do in public—and effective.
Use it to counteract the downsides of sitting, stay limber, and live, feel, and perform better.
I’ve included a video of each stretch.
The data suggest this routine can help you avoid pain and injury and maybe even add some time to your life.
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The post
Leah and I drove across the country last week.
Five A.M. Friday, we loaded our luggage and lunatic dogs into a rental car and left Las Vegas.
By 5 P.M. on Sunday, we’d reached the Northeast.
As Bob Dylan wrote:
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I've paid some dues gettin' through1
My dues were physical. Each day required 13 to 14 hours of sitting in a car seat, interrupted every three to five hours when we’d stop for 15 minutes at a truck stop.
All that sitting gives a body ample time to get tight, stuck, immobile, and lethargic from head to toe. It can also lead to some legit health consequences.
As early as the 1600s, the Italian scientist Bernardino Ramazzini understood the dangers of prolonged sitting.
But it wasn’t until the 1950s that we put hard data behind his observations. For example, scientists in 1958 studied autopsies of workers who sat different durations depending on their job. The now-famous paper, published in the British Medical Journal, found:
Physical activity of work is a protection against coronary heart disease. Men in physically active jobs have less coronary heart disease during middle-age, what disease they have is less severe, and they develop it later than men in physically inactive jobs.
We now know sitting long and often is a sort of toxin. It increases your odds of everything most likely to kill you today.
For example, a recent study in JAMA found that it doesn’t matter if you otherwise live healthy; sitting in long bouts increases your risk of dying by 16 percent. It raises your risk of heart disease death by 34 percent.
Prolonged sitting is also associated with:
Certain cancers. For example, breast and endometrial cancer. Probably because prolonged sitting increases inflammation and can lead to hormonal changes.
Deep vein thrombosis, which is “when a blood clot forms in a deep leg vein, which is dangerous because it can travel to the lung,” said researchers at Yale.
Pain and weakness in joints and muscles, probably due to those areas becoming too weak over time.
Depression and anxiety, likely because activity seems to enhance mental health.
Metabolic problems, likely because hours of sitting impairs your body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and break down fat.
Yet we all still have times in life when we have to sit longer than we want. For example, during extended meetings, flights, drives, and more.
So what should we do? I have a fix.
Today, we’re covering what I did on my long drive. I didn’t take those truck stop visits lightly. I used the breaks to move, mobilize, and reset with a specific routine.
Try it during your next road trip, layover, or long work day.
It’ll not only make you feel and move better immediately, improving your subsequent exercise, but it’ll also offset sitting’s health damages so you can live better and longer.