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10-min office lunch break workouts |
Dr Ashok Ahuja
The author is former head of Sports Medicine, Netaji Subash National INstitute of Sports, Patiala. |
With booming economy and global competition, the workload has increased amongst all white collared jobs, professionals, corporates, IT industry workers, software and computer engineers, internet savvy’, BPO workers, brokers, investors and fund mangers, bankers, etc.
This has led to crunch in the time for doing any physical activity as on an average one spends 10-12 hours or even more on sitting at the desk hunched over the computers and attending to non stop mobile, telephonic, and video conferencing discussions. Greater benefits of exercise including the feeling of well being, mood elevation, de-stressing and detoxifying of the body are being lost in this hurry-curry of life style change being seen in the present scenario.
This has already started showing alarming trends in the increase of various psycho somatic diseases, viz obesity, hypertension, cardiac problems, loss of muscle tone, computer aided soft tissue overuse traumas, backache, cervical spondylysis, frozen shoulders, muscle soreness, vague aches and pains etc, which in turn is reflecting in lowered physical work output and number of man hours are being lost in convalescing from these disorders.
To prevent this, simple 10 minute workouts at the place of work are important and should be made mandatory in all corporate and business houses. Here are set of six simple exercises with basic office tips and if adopted can have lot of positive influence on mind and body in generating positive attitude and energy.
1. Wall push ups are an excellent exercise and one can do in the cabin only 10 repetitions with 5 second hold. To do the same, stand about an arm’s length from the wall. Put your arms on the wall, shoulder width apart. Stand straight, feet flat on the floor, tuck in your abdomen and hold your chest up. Keep your body straight and lower yourself to do a push up against the wall. Slower you go, faster you tone the muscles.
2. Whole body stretch: It is a very effective isometric strength and stretching exercise. Clasp your hands above the head and stretch the whole body upwards with coming on toes as if trying to lengthen your height and holding for 5 seconds and repeating 5 times.
3. Calf Stretch: Stand behind your chair. Hold it with your hands and come on your toes to stretch the calf and hamstring muscles. Prolonged sitting on the buttocks and thighs with no movement in calf muscles decreases the strength and tone of the muscles. It shall prevent in the shortening of the muscle and shall improve flexibility.
4. Squats: Stand tall with your feet shoulder width apart. Keep your back straight and push your buttocks out while keeping your chest up. Squat slowly down in the position until the bottoms just touches the chair (Do not sit down) slowly stand up straight again. Breathe in as you descend and breathe out as you come up. It is a skiing position basically and good for the core strength of lower limb muscles. Perform 10 repetitions, hold for 5 second in squat position.
5. Upper body Stretch: Stretch your neck backwards with shoulders and hands also taking it backwards and protruding the chest forwards. Perform while sitting and then do rotational exercise (clockwise and anticlockwise) of neck on all sides.
6. 20 x 20 x 20 Exercise: People sitting on the computers or monitors must blink their eyes 20 times, look 20 feet away from the monitor and repeat it every 20 minutes.
7. Tips
A: Walk with the paper or file to hand over to your colleague’s cabin instead of calling attendants.
B: While attending to telephonic calls stand and walk in the cabin/ office around your table instead of attending while sitting.
C: Take plenty of water even if you are in Air conditioned environment. Skin becomes dry and requirement of water is more in the muscles when sitting. Keep a glass of water always on your table and keep sipping.
D: Always smile and laugh, exchange courtesies with juniors and seniors. This helps in toning up facial muscles. Let’s stop saying I am busy and have no time to do the exercises.
Benefits of physical activity cannot be undermined and if we can not get up early in the morning to go for a walk or come late after 12 hours of work, these 10 minutes office workouts shall be useful to stretch and strengthen your muscles and prevent number of musculoskeletal disorders and maintain fitness.
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