Chairs and sitting have an awfully bad reputation - they make your hip flexors and extensors tight and weak, most people don’t use their core to sit up right and the neck is usually not in line with the spine causing all sorts of misalignments down the body. There's too much sitting, and not enough moving so let’s get you moving while you are sitting.
It is only just to acknowledge that seated workouts do benefit a variety of people. If you're recovering from an injury or surgery, need extra support during pregnancy, use a wheelchair, or have balance challenges, a chair is your ticket to an awesome workout. Chair exercises allow you to gain strength in the upper body, lower body, and core, as well as more mobility if done often enough and correctly. The added advantage is that working out from your chair can also take pressure off many joints.
Whatever your reason, for those of you sitting for long periods of time, here is a full body workout that you can do while being seated.
Warming up the body with seated stretches:
Neck stretches.
Mini Roll downs to stretch the back.
Shoulder stretch (take the arm across the body and add shoulder rolls backwards, can also use a therabdn and take it over head and back in front).
Lateral stretches (stretching side to side of body) and rotation stretches (twisting from right to left and keeping sitting bones even on chair).
Arm stretch (tricep stretch taking arm behind head and the other hand on elbow):
Wrist stretch (circles with the wrists).
Gluteal stretch (man at a pub).
Hamstring stretches (using a theraband around foot and lifting it up the get a stretch).
Ankle stretch (ankle rolls and point and flex feet).
Abdominal Workout and Full Body Work: Seated Chest Lift (Pilates way drawing up from pelvic floor).
Seated Crunches (opposite elbow to knee and same elbow same knee).
Seated Hinge Backs (Lean back and come back to long line of spine).
Seated Jacks (arms out to side and one leg out to side and alternate legs)
Seated alternating toe touches (opposite arm to foot and then same arm same foot).
Seated Shaker (lean forward and opposite arm to foot and the other leg goes out to the side).
Single leg lifts (with bent knee, and then long legs but alternating the legs).
Arm work: Biceps Curl with hand weights.
Seated Bent Over Rows with hand weights.
Seated Hand Weight Press (Start with weight in front of you at your chest and rotate your arms up and over your head until arms are extended).
Back Extension:
Place the hands behind the back of the head and lift into the upper back and return to long line of spine.
Comments