Save Yourself From Sitting

First, I started my Reach the Beach race report last night. I wrote everything up to the actual start, which doesn't seem like I did very much work but a) a lot of things happened between Thursday and Sunday, and b) writing the report is making me very nostalgic, so every third paragraph, I have to take a break to look at pictures from the weekend and then excuse myself and go to the bathroom at work, where I lock myself in a stall and rock back and forth while weeping silently. Which, incidentally, is exactly what I do when I'm hungover at work, but with the addition of a nap with my head rested on the toilet paper dispenser. In any case, I hope to finish that up in the coming days.

Now, to the task at hand: last week, I told my boss that sitting is killing us. We spent 9 hours a day, 5 days a week (except me, since I've somehow finagled a whole string of short weeks, thanks to races and travel. Next week I'm working two days) sitting in a chair, typing and talking on the phone, in roughly the same position the entire time. If that doesn't sound like a recipe for death and destruction (and ample dicking around on the Internet) then I don't know what is.









Source

And it's true: sitting is making us fat; it's increasing our risk of heart disease and all kinds of cancers and maybe even gingivitis or something. And, worst of all, sitting is giving our bodies that unfortunate upper thigh/lower glute shape known as "secretary spread." Do. Not. Want.

So when I told David last week that every hour we spent sitting in our desk chairs is bringing us closer to death, I was hoping he'd tell me to work from home, where I could lie down. No dice. Instead, David decided our whole team was going to start sitting on exercise balls. Yes, really. Immediately, I suggested we get the kind with handles so that you can bounce from place to place. Again, no dice. But he did allow me to spend an entire morning researching the benefits of exercise balls, what sizes each of us would need based on height, where to buy them, and how much they cost. And for the record, I highly recommend having your boss be your best friend in the office.

So I set off for work yesterday, reeling from the special kind of depression that only comes after a really awesome weekend and absolutely dreading the day ahead. Until I remembered: Monday was the launch of the exercise ball!

We spent the first 40 minutes of the day inflating our balls, which was next to impossible. I whined the entire time, and considered the fact that death by sitting would at least be painless, whereas death by overuse of triceps from pumping air into an exercise ball was probably agonizing. But after fake outs where we thought the balls were adequately inflated only to sink like a stone when we sat on them (sitting is indeed making us fat), we finally did it. I bounced out of David's office to my own and prepared myself to have Kara Goucher's abs by close of business.

No dice.

The whole point of sitting on the ball is that you allegedly have to engage your core the whole time. Except that, as mentioned, I sit in the same position for 9 hours a day. The only time I engaged my core was when David walked by and kicked my ball from behind, causing me to go bouncing into my desk. He did that no fewer than eleven times.

Once I realized I wasn't really working that hard just sitting there, I decided I needed to be more active. For example, while waiting for a meeting to start, I decided to do sit ups on my ball "until the rest of the team arrived." I made it through 25 sit ups before I started screaming "Guys, please hurry up and get in here we need to start the meeting now ow ow ow ow ow!" Still, that's more sit ups than I've done since the Presidential Physical Fitness Tests in elementary school. By the time I left work, I could hardly wait to get home and examine my newly chiseled abs.

No dice.

They looked exactly the same. "Well, I'll probably be sore tomorrow."

No dice.

I went for an easy, post-race recovery run this morning and virtually the only part at wasn't sore was my core.

The bastion of all reliable knowledge, the Internet, assured me that sitting on this ball would force me to engage my core, thereby making my body work harder and differently, thereby saving me from certain death from plain old sitting. It should be like a 9 hour workout, which means I'd not only be working my core all damn day, but I'd probably burn 8,000 calories. All I needed to do was sit on it. And yet, I was no closer to looking like Kara Goucher this morning than I was yesterday. Which is to say, I don't look at all like Kara Goucher.

I decided I needed to do more. I was not going to stand for sitting and its inherent risks. I got to the office this morning, determined to make full use of the handy sheet of exercises enclosed in the packaging of my exercise ball.

I got to work, practically tossing my desk chair out of the way to roll my ball out from under my desk, and positioned myself atop it. And howled in pain.

Yesterday, I wore pants to work, but today I'm in a dress, which means that all the skin on the backs of my legs is exposed and at the ready to be ripped from my limbs by the rubber ball. Think of those really hot days when you get stuck to your subway seat. Times a million.

A quick check of my exercise sheet indicates there are several exercises I can do that won't require skin grafts, but as I'm in a dress, and at work, I don't know that the Abductor Leg Lift is really for me. I should be able to find something to do, though.