How to Offset the Effects of Sitting to Improve Posture and Reduce Pain

Sitting! One of the biggest contributors to our generation of people suffering from bad posture and back pain! In Western society, everything has been engineered to have us sitting with our hips at 90⁰ - chairs, toilets, cars, etc which leads to our hips being so used to that position that they become stiff and the muscles around them shorten, creating a vice-like effect. We therefore lose mobility into other hip positions and consequently the surrounding muscles can’t do their jobs properly either. This is why we often hear of health practitioners telling us things like our “glutes aren’t firing” or we are “quad dominant”. So how do we offset the effects of sitting? Hopefully this blog can give you some simple tips to reverse the damage!

One useful tip is to evaluate the amount of sitting you do during the day, and aiming to offset this at the end of each day. Be honest with yourself and take into account driving, working, sitting on the couch watching a movie, eating, etc. From there, for every hour of sitting (hips in a bent up/flexed position), aim to do one minute of work on hip extension (i.e. stretching the front of the hips and strengthening the hip extensors such as Glutes and Hamstrings).

Other than offsetting the sitting, working on hip extension is hugely beneficial for everyday life. These muscles are responsible for having good gait and ensuring we are walking and running efficiently. They play a big part in getting up off chairs, out of cars, off the floor, and so when they are a little sleepy our body compensates and uses other muscles which can often lead to some of the common back and hip pain we see. As humans we really only have about 15-20degrees of hip extension (how far you can take your straight leg behind your hips keeping your pelvis and lower back still), however if we don’t have the ability to do that, every time we take a step we find the movement somewhere else such as hinging at the lower back, which puts it under unnecessary load. The hip joint is the biggest joint in the body so we need to make sure it’s working well so that all the other little joints in our knees, feet, spine etc, don’t have to compensate and overwork! Take a look at the video for ideas on hip mobility and hip extensor strength, and remember movement is medicine!