“It has nothing to do with sports,” says Murphy Halasz, PT, DPT, a physical therapist at Run Lab in Austin, TX. “It has everything to do with sitting too much.” That’s because sitting usually looks like this: hips flexed, shoulders rounded in, chest drawn, and head dropped. Staying seated like this for hours at a time can make your muscles and joints feel “stuck” in that position. There are exercise-related reasons that you may feel stiffness in these areas, but they’re not nearly as common of culprits as sitting, stresses Halasz. Exercising moves these muscles and joints through a range of motion—sitting does not. For that reason, sitting fares far worse for body stiffness than any sport ever could. Hello, constant pain.
How to stretch to counter the effects of sitting all day
The good news is, taking the time to stretch can help counter the effects of being hunched over your computer all day. This stretch opens the chest and shoulders and places your joints in the opposite angle than the typical sitting position. It’s effective because it takes all those areas of the body that are flexed (or shortened) while seated and extends (or lengthens) them. Not only is this move incredibly simple to do, but it just so happens to feel amazing. How to do it: Make it harder: For a deeper stretch, use a stability ball to do a bridge. Stretch over the ball in the same way you would stretch over a pillow stack with your belly facing up. Hold here and breathe deeply.
