Does Sitting Kill Your Back?

Lessons learned from animals on how to stay fit

When we wake up in the morning, we usually do the yawning-stretching exercise similar to what a girl in the below picture does. This exercise can keep you fit all day and even improve your fitness condition if practiced more often during the day. Moreover, if your lifestyle involves a lot of sitting, it can also help you to combat sitting fatigues and pains.

Once I watched an animal show on TV where predators would lie idly under the tree and in the next moment rush for prey.

I asked myself: How can they be fit all the time? Why, after being in idle for days, can they jump and speed up without any warming up?

I noticed, they would frequently do the same type of exercise we also do after waking up.

Wake up stretch is so well-known that people usually call it morning stretching. But if you break it down to elements, you will find that after stretch you also tense your muscles. It’s tensing, not stretching, which gives you a pleasant muscle energizing feeling. After tensing, we, like lions, are also ready to fight.

What if we do this morning stretch more often? Will my back and neck stop hurting after long sitting on a computer?

I decided to try. My work required a lot of killer sitting. Usually, after 20 minutes my back and neck would turn stiff.

I started exercising every 20 minutes.

My first exercises were to neck and back muscles. I picked up some stretch exercises from U-tube and added the tensing element. I would stretch my back and tense it as long as it felt pleasant. Then I would move on to the neck.

Very soon, back and neck pains disappeared. I added exercises for other parts of the body. Much to my surprise, I noticed that my overall fitness condition was significantly improving just thanks to these frequent exercises.

Stretch-tensing exercises are easy and pleasant. You can do them wherever and whenever you want. They don’t require any equipment.

Later, from observing animals, I also found that their great fitness condition was boosted by regular intensive or durable workouts like chasing prey, fighting, running away, or playing. Their lifestyle also showed me the importance of good rest and the damage of stressing over things that don’t matter.

There’s no scientific evidence about the effect of the exercises to combat sitting fatigue or enhance physical strength. There’s just not enough research in the area. But my own 10 years old experience encourages me to share this fitness method for more people to try. I’ve been happy to be capable of carrying out my sitting work without any back or neck muscle problems. These exercises also empowered me to expand my fitness program to become much healthier than when I was young.

If you are interested in learning more lessons from animals on how to stay fit, you can review my below article.