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My Stupid Simple Exercise Program for Chair Dwellers

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Earthoid.'s picture
September 16, 2015 at 6:54pm
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So I worked out pretty regularly until the age of 24, then real world stuff took place and I started building a web business spending ridiculous amount of hours sitting on a chair doing nothing.  I'm 29 now so for about 4 1/2 years I spent up to 16 hrs per day sitting while I hustled away at my biz.

About 6 months ago I became very conscious of the potential damage this was doing to my back, and I didn't want to end up 34-35 years old with a bum back.

I began a really stupid simple little exercise routine focused mainly on maintaining the health and flexibility of my spine.  A healthy spine also provides other benefits which I have experienced and do on a daily basis.  For me these benefits have been profound and that's why I wanted to share this with my fellow 11W'ers.  This is especially good if you spend long hours sitting in a chair.

So what I did is I bought one of those extendable pull-up bars - the ones that tighten to either side of a door frame.  I began with the bar a little over halfway up from the floor.  You'll have to test this and adjust for your height, but the goal is that standing in front of it, facing away from it, you should be able to easily bend backwards and catch the bar.

You know like gymnasts do bridges.  That's the exact kind of motion you want.  Standing facing away from the bar about 3 feet in front of it.  Once you successfully grab the bar with your hands you should hold that position, allowing you head to hang as far back as possible (exposing your adam's apple area upwards).

So you start slow.  Make it an easy bend back and fairly easy to hold the position to start.  While your back there you focus on your breathing.  Breath in as deeply as you can, hold it for a few seconds, then exhale.  Start by holding the posture for 5 deep breaths.  When you come out of it, don't just move yourself so that you come out of it easily.  Keep your feet firmly planted, do not move them from the original position and then come out of it by using your abdominal muscles to lift yourself back upright with your arms and hands still extended above you pointing directly up.  You'll know what I mean when you do it.  You'll feel it in your abs.

That's the main exercise.  That's it.  But here's where it gets interesting.  Every couple of weeks you slowly move the bar down, so that the bend back to catch the bar and holding the posture becomes more challenging.  You also increase the number of breaths you take for each hold, effectively holding it for longer and longer periods of time.

Just to give you an example, for me the bar now stands a bit lower than halfway down the door frame (started a bit higher than halfway) and I now hold the position for 40 breaths instead of the 5 I started with.

You'll also notice that your breathing cycle will gradually become longer (how long a full breath and exhale takes).  This is a good thing.  However it means that if you took 10 breaths before but now you're up to 20, you could be holding the position for 3x as long rather double, because of the elongation of your breathing cycle.

That's literally all I have been doing and I have been seeing incredible and profound results, including:

  • I feel "stronger" when I'm sitting. Not sure how to explain it but before I began to feel really weak and "hunchy" when I was sitting.  Now I sit upright and feel as though there is actually some solid foundation holding me there
  • Every time I do I finish a session, I gain a noticeable boost of energy, alertness and focus.  It truly is the closest thing to a drug that I've experienced naturally.  And that carries over and throughout my day.  When I start feeling a little sluggish, I do  mini session of 10-20 breaths and I'm right back at it.
  • Overall I have much more energy and a general sense of well being.  You know like when you were still young and you just got done working out, feeling all ripped like you can take on the world.  Well instead of in your biceps, you get that feeling throughout your core.  Your back, your abs, legs and shoulders.  
  • I can see by the progress I've already made that one day I will be able to go all the way down to the floor and come back up, which I don't care what anyone says, it's an incredible feat of strength, balance and flexibility.
  • Speaking of balance, I definitely have better balance and feel more sure footed.  

In any case, this is getting a bit long, but I'll just end with some things I may have forgotten to mention throughout:

-  When you do the motion back to grab the bar, it should be controlled, same for coming back up.  If you can't control yourself all the way back and forward, you've got the bar set too low.  You should feel in full control at all times or else you're putting yourself in danger of injury.

- If you have existing back issues,  I wouldn't recommend you do anything back related without first approving it with your doctor and even then with great, great care.  One of the reasons I became so interested in this is because my business partner (33 yo) suffers from debilitating back pain because he didn't do anything about it when he was my age

- It will feel a bit weird at first, but it soon becomes this thing that feels overwhelmingly good.  You'll feel more and more control coming on and it's a very gratifying feeling.  Not sure how else to explain it.

- The breathing is an important part of it, I think even more important than the physical action.  Don't skimp on the breathing part.

- As far as schedule or whatever, I don't really have one. I do it when I feel like I need to do it.  I do it at least 3 times a day normally, and that's for like 3 minutes max each.  We're talking 10 minutes out of your day for incredible benefits.  

- Oh yeah, STRETCH before you do it, never go into it cold.  While standing cross your right foot over you left and then bend downwards at the waist as far as possible.  Switch feet and do it again, holding for 30 seconds each.  If you feel that one leg is significantly more difficult (you have more pain, etc) to do it, you should do another 30 second session on that leg.  This simple stretch helps to align the spine and should be done in any case, every day at least 3 times a day, even if you do literally nothing else.

So there it is.  Long yes, but if even one of you decide to try and see even half the benefits that I have, it'll have been worth me writing this and you reading it.  

Go Bucks!

 

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