An Exercise Program for Writers

You can overcome a sedentary job

If you write, you value concentration and freedom from distraction. You also sit much of the day. Some writers use standing desks. That was a no-go for me, but I discovered something better in my research on fitness and health.

Combined with an awesome Medium article I read the other day about the best exercise for seniors, I believe this one-two punch is the best way professional sitters/writers can maintain basic fitness and overcome our naturally sedentary occupation.

Even if you use a standing desk, you should be aware staying in the same position for hours creates long term health decline. Sitting is worse than standing, but staying in one position for hours isn’t health-promoting.

The Blue Zones

We know from studying long-lived populations in the Blue Zones (7th Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California; Greeks in Ikaria; Okinawans in Japan; Italians in Sardinia, and Costa Ricans in Nicoya) that a key feature of their lifestyle is moving around, at a reasonable pace, all day.

They tend to age gracefully, spry and active to the end.

It’s not aerobics or weightlifting, it’s lifestyle. They do daily chores, garden and shop for groceries, walk just about everywhere, and because they feel pretty good — play with kids, get into community activities, and generally stay busy.

Our lifestyles as Americans, and especially as writers in front of computers, promote the opposite.

We drive most of the places we go. We watch TV or get online for leisure. We tend to isolate from others, thus having fewer opportunities for sports as adults. COVID has made all this worse. Oh — and we own major appliances, hire housekeepers, get take-out, and order groceries.

So many parts of our daily lives add up to one thing: sitting still.

The Debunked Weekend Warrior

A workout at the gym a few times a week is healthy, but research shows it doesn’t counteract prolonged sitting, or prolonged standing.

Put more plainly, “Exercise does not offset health risks” of sitting.

Slow, steady, daily exercise is superior, like the Blue Zoners. Bursts of aerobics, sprints, and lifting weights are a wonderful add-ons, but Blue Zone people live long, healthy lives because of their lifestyle, not a gym membership or half hour run every day.

They climb stairs, run with their grandkids, and lift heavy objects when building or maintaining their homes.

Research on astronauts shows micro-gravity has the same effect as sitting all day: it speeds up aging.

Astronauts in space age ten times faster than the rest of us, based on years of research by NASA. (For more on this fascinating topic, check out books and articles by NASA scientist Joan Vernikos.)

How to Anti-Astronaut Your Way to Health

There are three daily practices to counteract all the sitting you do as a writer.

The first is to get up frequently. Sit for 20 or 25 minutes, then stand up for a minute or so. The very act of standing up, then sitting back down, breaks the detrimental effects of prolonged sitting.

Research shows that this behavior is correlated to improved metabolic health, including triglyceride and blood sugar levels, as well as weight.

You don’t have to stand up for a long time, wasting precious writing hours. A minute or so if sufficient.

I’ve found setting a watch timer is the best method. After I sit down, I set it for 20 minutes. When it buzzes, I stand up. Sometimes, if I’m the midst of a particularly brilliant thought — nearly all the time, let’s face it — I resist. But usually I’m able to follow through by picturing myself old and decrepit and unable to open a bottle of ketchup.

If I feel a buzz, I finish the sentence I’m writing and stand up.

Within a few weeks of practice, it’s become natural to get up frequently and feels wrong to sit for an hour or more.

As the Medium article recommends, always get up from a seated position with your legs. Don’t push up with your arms. Stand from a seated position as if you are coming up from a partial squat.

Getting your body out of a chair using only your legs is similar to doing a squat, one of the greatest of all weight-bearing exercises.

Maintaining your leg musculature and strength is critical to keeping muscle mass as you age. Professional weight trainers know that leg muscles are where you get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of building and sustaining muscle mass.

When you sit back down, do the same thing. Don’t put weight on your arms but instead lower yourself into the chair slowly with your legs, avoiding the tendency to fall back like a sack of potatoes.

Finally, consider buying one of the cheapest, highest value pieces of exercise equipment on the planet: a rebounder, also known as a mini-trampoline.

It costs about $40 and doesn’t take up much space. With one of these you can bounce for five or ten minutes and improve lymph drainage and get yourself moving without a major commitment.

When you stand up every 20 minutes, you can bounce for 1 minute. Or bounce once a day for 10 minutes. I’m not saying you need to get one of these contraptions, because walking or other exercise are terrific gentle movements, but mini-tramps are fun, help with balance, and require zero training.

The Long Game

Getting up from your chair, or moving away from your desk every 20 minutes, is not natural.

It may feel like you’ll lose your train of thought, or never get back to work again, but it’s not true. A minute of interruption is a small price to pay for robust health, and you’ll get right back into it as soon as you sit down in front of your screen.

Sitting is the new smoking, and prolonged sitting is tied to all kinds of health problems. It takes years off your life, and if you look at the astronaut research it’s easy to see why.

Gravity is our friend. If we don’t use it, we don’t keep our muscle mass, and if we lose muscle we lose balance, coordination, blood flow, and most important of all: pep.

I’m not 100% consistent, but after a couple of months of practice it’s more normal for me to get up often than to sit for hours.

I often go outside. I look at something far away (another prescription for people who stare at screens all day, to take a break every 1/2 hour and look into the distance), pet the dogs, walk barefoot on the grass, get a glass of water, straighten something or other, or make a cup of tea.

Inertia is a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Sitting all day is enjoyable. Sinking into the couch to watch a two-hour movie feels like luxury. It’s okay once in a while, but as a habit science has loudly proclaimed you must counteract long periods of downtime.

If it weren’t for our post-industrial, American lives this wouldn’t be an issue, but we must swim against the tide of normal, modern living.

Prolonged sitting is right up there with drinking heavily, sucking down a pack of Marlboro’s every day, or eating doughnuts and fruit loops on the regular.

But the evils of prolonged sitting aren’t nearly as obvious as smoking, drinking, and overeating.

They take a long time to develop, which is maybe why the ill-effects of sedentariness are so often compared to smoking. Half the people who smoke cigarettes die from tobacco-related illness, and it’s not a pretty end.

We writers are not condemned to flabbiness. We are pretty smart, after all. We can overcome inertia and still produce great copy and make a living.

The long game doesn’t come with a lot of gold stars, so here is an added incentive to interrupt inertia: a video of astronauts returning to earth after 200 days in space.

Notice how they can’t walk out of their spaceships. It’s not because of the re-entry or because they were big couch potatoes up there in the stars. That’s prolonged low-gravity.

Sitting does the same thing — it just takes decades.