Most of us have the experience of commuting to work, some people have such a bad reaction to sitting in traffic or on a bus that there entire body beginning to tighten up so we have decided to provide some free advice on the topic
There many ways in which people commute to work
- walk
- run
- cycle
- drive
For each one of these we are going to provide some advice. One way is not necessarily better than another but each has its own merits when you tend to look at the bigger picture ( time spent sitting walking etc)
You see the issue is not the commute itself, it’s how often you repeat the same thing day in and day out.
Your body loves variety- it hates consistency so in order to keep our bodys healthy we must challenge ourselves in different ways.
Walking
Ok walking is a great form of exercise but too much walking long distance can take its toll on your body and knees/ hips don’t help it recover. By recovering I mean stretching and foam rolling. Over time your calves can get very tight from the repeated commute walking so pay close attention to you calve muscles and stretch them regularly
Running
Brilliant. Excellent, best form of exercises. But in saying that runners are notoriously bad at warming up properly. Unless you are person of the year and are up 2 hours before you need to go to work, you are not going to get enough time to get up shower , eat, get dressed. Most of us fall out of bed and fire out the door- this will not bode well if you run to work every day. Running without a warm up a few days a week is ok but think how many times you do this in a month or 3 months. Do you notice niggles beginning to creep in?
Cycling.
This is a silver cross to a vampire. So you need to picture this. Cycling means exercising while sitting. Sitting at work , well is sitting. So you sit for work and you exercise while sitting? Does this shout out Variation? I think not. People who sit for work and cycle to work can more commonly complain of lower back hip or knee issues.
Simply because they are not doing anything to combat the hours they are spending sitting. Too much sitting and exercising is bad for your body. If you sit for 4 hours you need to do 10 mins of stretching- if you cycle for an hour you need to do 10 mins of stretching focusing on calves and quads.
Drive/ public Transport
Again this is the same instance as cycling. More sitting. It’s not the sitting that causes the problem, it is the constant hours of sitting you do that results in shorter muscle length and affects your posture and gait biomechanically. It also deconditions your muscles which is problematic when we want to maintain strength as we get older.
So what do i do- how do i commute and keep health
- Stretch
- Vary the ways you commute
- Strengthen
As I mentioned earlier, your body loves variety. If you walk to work, sit for 8 hours, do the same exercise class at the same tempo every week and then do pilates at the weekend without any variation your body is going to get so efficient at doing these tasks that it is not challenged enough. This results in you being very strong in these movements but vulnerable outside of those movements
So here are 7 exercises that you should do to combat the hours you spend commuting and sitting at a desk.
Areas we target are
Calves
Glutes
Quads
Upper Back Shoulders
Check out this video that give you all the info you need
Dont forget if you have any questions just hit reply with them and we will come back to you with answers.