The Sitting Fix

A practical protocol to offset the harms of too much sitting (it's awesome for road trips).

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We were somewhere around Topeka on the edge of a wheat field when the exhaustion began to take hold.

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 targeted stretches during stops.

• The routine is fast, simple, not embarrassing to do in public—and effective.

• 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.

Housekeeping

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The post

Leah and I drove across the country last week.

Five A.M. on 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 tightens, stiffens, and slows a body down. It also carries real health consequences.

The Italian scientist Bernardino Ramazzini understood² the dangers of prolonged sitting all the way back in the 1600s. But hard data didn’t arrive until 1958, when scientists studied autopsies of workers who sat varying amounts. Their paper, published in the British Medical Journal³, found that sedentary men developed heart disease earlier and more severely.

We now know sitting long and often is like a toxin. A recent study in JAMA found that it doesn’t matter how healthy your lifestyle is otherwise; sitting for 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 prolonged sitting is unavoidable: extended meetings, flights, drives, and more.

So what should you do? I have a fix.

The sitting fix

Rule one: Walk when you can

Most people at truck stops don’t do much. They stand stationary as they fill the car. Then they shuffle into the bathroom and return to the car to sit and wait on their travel companions.

That’s a missed opportunity. View your stop as a chance to get blood flowing. This matters more than you might think.

Consider: One study had people sit for eight hours under different conditions—some could only get up for the bathroom, others got up to walk briefly at set intervals. The finding, as Harvard researchers noted:

“Any amount of walking after sitting for a long period is better than nothing. All break patterns reduced systolic blood pressure by 4 to 5 points compared with sitting all day, an amount comparable to a 13% to 15% decrease in cardiovascular disease risk.”

Do some laps around the Flying J.

I jammed in anywhere from 500 to 1,000 steps with the dogs while Leah was in the gas station.

Rule two: Do the following stretching routine

Prolonged sitting tightens your hips, quads, chest, and back. That can lead to aches and pains and hurt your workouts. It also makes you feel like crap.

As the gas tank filled, I did the following stretch routine. It takes three to five minutes, about the same time it takes a tank to fill.

But first, some rules I considered when creating this routine:

• You have to be able to do it at a gas station while, say, filling up your car. Hence:

  • It must be quick and straightforward.

  • It can’t require special gear or environmental features.

  • You have to be able to do it while standing. Because who wants to writhe around oil-stained asphalt?

  • It can’t be too weird. It can be a bit weird, but you should be able to do it at a gas station or office without the entire place thinking you’re experiencing an exorcism.

Here are its four stretches and how to do them:

1. Quad pullback

The couch stretch is my favorite for tight quads, but it’s hard do on the road. The quad pullback mimics the couch stretch.

Stand on one leg and pull the heel of your other leg into your butt. A big tip to make it work better:

• Keep your hips forward and your butt repeatedly as you hold the stretch. Flexing your butt pushes your hips forward, stretching your quad more.

Time: 20 seconds on each leg.

2. Half-moon mobilization

This one loosens your shoulders, lats, and back.

Bring your feet together. Reach your arms overhead and clasp your hands together. Try to make your body as tall and long as possible. Then flex side-to-side, making your body the shape of a big half-moon.

You should feel this on your sides, from your hips to your elbows.

Time: 40 seconds, or about 10 stretches on each side.

3. Side lunge windmill

This one moves you side-to-side.

It stretches your lower body by hitting your inner thighs, hamstrings, and glutes. It mobilizes your upper body by working your thoracic spine, chest, shoulders, and back.

Stand with your feet far apart, slightly wider than shoulder width, your toes pointed forward. Lunge to your right side. Touch the ground with both hands on the inside of your right foot. Keep your left hand on the ground as you bring your right hand up overhead, twisting your torso to do so. Reverse the movement, then repeat it to your left side.

Time: 40 seconds, or about 6 stretches on each side.

4. Cross-leg forward fold

It stretches your hips and glutes, low back, and calves.

Stand tall and cross your right foot immediately in front of your left. Then bend down and touch your toes. You’ll feel the stretch on the side of your back leg. Hold it, then repeat on your other side.

A big tip to deepen the stretch:

• Push your weight into the hip of your backward leg.

Time: 20 seconds on each side.

A quick note

This is, of course, a partial list of all the things you can do to offset sitting. The point of this routine isn’t to do a full-on workout in the parking lot of a 7-11—we’ll leave that to the clinically insane people. Rather, it’s a practical approach that works wonders for busy people on the road or stuck in an office or airport.

Now let’s hear from you

In the comments section, tell us your favorite quick, simple ways to offset sitting.

Have fun, don’t die, The only thing I knew how to do, Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew, Tangled up in blue.⁴

-Michael

1. I have a theory that most Bob Dylan songs are better when performed by someone other than Dylan. In the case of this song, Tangled Up in Blue, I prefer the Jerry Garcia cover. Here’s Garcia’s take, here’s Dylan’s.

2. Franco G, Franco F. Bernardino Ramazzini: The Father of Occupational Medicine. Am J Public Health. 2001 Sep;91(9):1382. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.91.9.1382. PMID: 11527763; PMCID: PMC1446786.

3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2027542/pdf/brmedj03082-0009.pdf

4. IYKYK.