Destroy sitting disease and get active

Staying fit when you are sitting down for eight or more hours a day is tough. It requires a great strategy implemented with passion and persistence.

In a later article I am going to delve more deeply into the psychology of goal achievement when it comes to health and fitness, it is the critical area where most people sabotage themselves so it pays to get it right. But for now, here are my insider tips to staying fit while in the office.

Thinking points

• Set a goal, commit it to paper. For example: ‘It’s September 30 and I feel on top of the world now that I weigh 74kgs’. Make sure it is in the present and personal tense.

• Get excited about your goal.

• Create a list of every reason you can think of for why you want to achieve your goal. This should include at least 20 reasons but ideally up to 100.

• Make sure you have the best tools and strategies so you do not waste time and effort. You might think it is easy but you would be surprised how a great personal trainer/health coach can guide you and help you avoid the many pitfalls on the road to great health and a fantastic looking body.

• Align yourself with your goal. Lots of people have beliefs or values that are opposing their goal to lose weight. For example, they might believe that it costs too much time and they are too busy earning money to invest or buy a new house or they might believe exercising is taking time away from their children. You need to think through these values and beliefs to get the negative association out of the picture and replace it with a positive one.

Pragmatic steps

• Get some mini fitness challenges set up at work. Corporate wellness is a massive growth area for Gulf Cooperation Council companies at the moment so this would be a perfect programme to initiate.
• It could be the first person to do 200 push-ups while at work gets a prize, you could even ring a bell when someone completes 20 of them in one go. Get an assistant to track people’s progress over the two months you run the challenge.

• Get the stairs cleaned up and looking pretty. You could adorn the stair walls with graphics that have quotes on stair walking and its benefits. Paint the walls an attractive colour and make sure the lighting is working perfectly.

• Get a table tennis court or a table football pitch installed. This gets people up and moving and their nervous systems activated, it is also a great way to deal with stress positively.

• Plan a ‘stretch your legs event’ where people are encouraged to leave their cars further away from the building and use the stairs when they enter the building. The person to walk the most gets an extra days paid leave.
• Desk squats and desk press-ups can also be done at any time during the day.Working these major muscle groups has a significant effect on the metabolism and healthy hormone production. If you need a guide on how to do these simple exercises just YouTube them.

• Get a chair yoga class set up at work. The workplace Yogi is a company we love working with for our corporate wellness clients. They do 30 minute sessions that work perfectly in an office setting.

I hope that this has given you a dose of inspiration and some good ideas. Now all that remains, to quote the Nike phrase is to ‘just do it’.

Tim Garrett is the founder of Corporate Wellness Co. www.corporatewellnessdubai.com