This one is for all you office workers out there. If you find yourself sitting in front of your PC for 8 hours a day, you are probably storing up a load of problems for your body.
Not only the obvious ones like getting fat and unfit, but soon your joints are going to start giving you problems, your mobility will reduce and risks of repetitive strain injury (RSI) will increase.
Workrave – http://www.workrave.org/
So I want you to take a look at a FREE little computer programme called Workrave (http://www.workrave.org/). It is totally free and you run it in the background of your computer. Then every few minutes it flashes up a reminder to take “micro-breaks”. These can be simply 30 seconds where you are not staring into your monitor, or you stand up and walk round your desk a coupe of times. Basically, it reminds you to not spend 8 hours solid sitting, peering into the screen. I have been using it with a couple of people to help them improve their flexibility/mobility. Everytime it flashes up a reminder, they spend 30 seconds doing a mini stretching routine. The programme itself even has a few standard stretches/exercises built into it that you can follow, or you can just use the timer to remind you to do any kind of “little and often” task (eg – taking a swig of water, getting off your butt, sucking up to the boss etc). And, if like me, you are not allowed to install anything onto your work PC, there is even a “portable” version that will run off any standard memory stick (http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/workrave_portable). So seriously, if you work in an office and have ever used that as an excuse as to why you can’t increase your activity levels, try this little app and see if you can increase your background activity (click here for more details) levels. Oh, and by the way, I am in no way affiliated to Workrave and am not getting sponsored by them or anything. I just find it a fantastic little tool that can help people that want to help themselves.