For several years I worked as a massage therapist, working on clients who sat at their desk all day. Their bodies were mostly destroyed most of the time. Because I deeply shamed all of them regularly for being so terrible to their bodies, now that I have a computer-centric job I try to not to do the same. In order to do this, I try to integrate as many health-positive elements into my office as possible, so I thought I would share with you. Presenting:
Top 5 Ways to Design the Ultimate Hard Body Workstation
1. Standing Desk: The most important component of a UHB workstation is multiple postural options. After a few months of work my back started hurting crazy bad, so I got a standing work set-up. This helped a ton, but wasn’t a complete fix. If you look close at the picture of my desk, you might notice that there’s a pillow and blanket. These were my cushions for sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. Being able to move into a third position when I needed did help my back, but this soon turned into me lying on the floor half the time and all but setting up a blanket fort under my desk.
2. ProStretch: Work is the perfect time to work on my ankle mobility. Sometimes I try to make my coworkers use it. My boss was especially not into it – I believe his exact words were, “I will have nothing to do with that. It is evil.” But he doesn’t mind having tight achilles’.
3. H2O: Water is super important because of all the reasons you already know, plus it forces you to go to the bathroom a lot so you get up and move your body once in a while and don’t get bored at work. Not that you would ever get bored at work.
4. Vitamins: These are fancy vitamins with fish oil in them and they taste like candy.
5. Moral compass: This is for internal health, but is important to make sure that you don’t have inner demons distracting you from taking care of your body.
Obviously you should do whatever fits your health/fitness needs at work, just make sure you’re not undoing all of your hard workouts by being a lazy butt at work. And if you have a full-blown blanket fort in your office, please let me know and send pictures immediately so I can be inspired by your complete lack of shame. I’m halfway there, but I need encouragement.
2 Comments
Some people at work are using stand up desks, but I need to spread out to much. I do have a fit ball I sit on once in a while, and I try to do some reading and conference calls standing up.
Yeah it can be hard – the best is to get one of those really expensive desks that just moves up and down with a motor. Great solution if you’re super rich! I’ve always wanted to try one of those fit balls with the rolling base, but not sure I would like it in the long run.