Too Much Sitting? Undo The Damage With These 3 Moves

Mobility coach Alisa Zuravskaja shows us how:

Your body was made for movement

Sitting is famously not great for the health—not only does it do bad things for your muscles, but also, it bunches up your internal organs in ways they definitely don’t want to be bunched up, and that can lead to very serious problems later.

Happily, we can undo this damage, with a few simple exercises (done regularly), such as:

• Reverse tabletop: sit on the floor with your hands behind you and your fingers pointing forward. Squeeze your glutes and drive your hips up towards the ceiling. Hold at the top for 3–5 seconds, then lower slowly. Focus on your glutes working rather than your lower back. This activates your glutes, opens your hip flexors, extends your thoracic spine, opens your chest, and strengthens your posterior chain.
• Hip CARs: or, “controlled articular rotations”. To do these, stand or kneel and draw your knee upwards, rotate it out to the side, then sweep it back and around in a slow, controlled circle. Keep your upper body still and move only your leg. This moves your hip joint through its range of motion.
• Windmill: stand with your feet wide and hinge from your hips. Reach one arm towards the floor while rotating the other towards the ceiling, keeping both arms in a vertical line. Follow your top hand with your eyes. This loads your hamstrings, mobilizes your calves and ankles, rotates your thoracic spine, stabilizes your core, opens your lateral line, and works your posterior chain. Start without weight, then progress to a light kettlebell or dumbbell, once you feel ready to do so.

For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like:

Stand Up For Your Health (Or Don’t) ← our main feature on the perils of being overly sedentary, and also includes more things you can do if you must sit, to make sitting less bad!

Take care!