Do you know how much time you spend sitting?
I know I am sitting for too much!
Every day I work for more than 10 hours on projects in front of a computer. It is not uncommon to do all night marathons trying to fit work for clients and personal projects. Of course, this is pretty much a recipe for burnout.
A year ago I decided to take radical change about my diet and how I live. I was suffering from (Bloating, Nausea, need to lay down right after a meal, feeling dizzy after eating, I could not maintain concentration and so on). – I will dedicate another video especially for the health issues I had and how changing my diet helped and how I found about the gut – immune system – brain link and everything else, but I will leave that for a more in-depth video.
Lately, my back started to hurt really bad and after 40 minutes of sitting, I would feel aches in my back and shoulders.
I got so overwhelmed from projects that I realized if I want to keep up and preserve my body and mind, I would need to come up with a plan. First were the changes in my diet, and a lot later I came up with the Push-Up challenge.
Bear in mind that the following footage is after I have lost more than 12 kg in a really short period of time and totally out of shape.
We have a problem so ITS TIME TO DO SOMETHING!
And what to do better than exercise?
I decided to start with is a pushup challenge.
The challenge is really simple!
You have to do pushups EVERY DAY and raise the number of pushups with 9% every day.
First, you do as much as you can in a series. For me was 50.
That is going to be your 0-day number.
Then you raise it 9% every day.
On the 10th day, I changed the increase rate from 9% to 4%.
It sounds messy, but the incremental element is important and I will talk about it later.
I will put a link to Google sheet https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ssixEQo9bfAvsr0Bcpitvectj9La7Onx/view?usp=sharing so you could adjust the challenge to yourself.
Before I was able to max out 50 at once, so my first day of the challenge I had to do 55 (rounded).
The next day 59, the day after that 65, later 71 and so on…
The rules are:
1st. You have to do pushups every day. (Feeling pain or you go to disco this night is not an excuse)
I have done my pushups in the office, at home, at a friends house, whenever I can. I have done pushups before and after a party, so no EXCUSES !!!
2nd. Your daily push-ups don’t need to be done in one training. I found it really hard going around 140, just time-wise to do it at once, so I spread it in the morning (or at the office) and at night at home.
3th. You do not have a time limit or how much pushups in a series. I was doing 20 pushups in a row for as many series needed until the end.
Why pushups?
Pushups are a fast and effective exercise for building strength. They can be done from virtually anywhere and don’t require any equipment.
Pushups are really easy to follow for everyday consistent exercise routine!
You don’t have to think about what training you are going to do at the gym or which muscle you should work on today. You just have to PUSH!
Why incrementing is important?
Every day work on the same muscle increases your risk of plateauing (that’s when you no longer gain the same benefits from your workout).
This happens because your muscles adapt and improve their function when they are stressed (as they are when you’re weight lifting or doing other exercises like pushups, for example). So it’s important to continue to challenge your muscles to improve your strength and physical fitness level.
The mental challenge and the small gratifications
I felt amazing after every workout! I could feel how my body thrives and how I got moving from sitting all day.
Also, you know that you have a challenge every day and when you achieve it you have a small dopamine hit that is going to reinforce the good habit.
As in the Harvard health article “Why pushups help beat aging”. “Challenges are a fun way to set up mini, short-term goals, which many men need to stay focused on their fitness,” says. Dr. Phillips.
And here I am hitting 247 pushups the 30th day totaling 4322 pushups for the month.
The final result is that I don’t feel that tired every night, my back hurts less and my aesthetics are better ?.
For final I think that the pushup challenge is awesome for getting in shape,
“You can do them anywhere and at any time. All you need is your bodyweight and a few minutes.”
But why sitting kills us?
First of all, we are not adapted for sitting prolonged time in one place.
Sitting for prolonged periods of time can be a major cause of back pain, to cause increased stress of the back, neck, arms, and legs and can add a tremendous amount of pressure to the back muscles and spinal discs. Additionally, sitting in a slouched position can overstretch the spinal ligaments and strain the spinal discs. https://www.uclahealth.org/spinecenter/ergonomics-prolonged-sitting
Limited evidence is available on the association between sitting and the risk of anxiety. However, findings suggest a positive association in anxiety risk increase as sitting time increases may exist (particularly between sitting time and risk of anxiety). https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-015-1843-x
There are More Earlier studies linking exercise and heart disease.
one of them is “Bus drivers and conductors”
In 1953 Dr. Jeremy Morris and colleagues examined the onset of coronary artery disease in 31,000 male transport workers aged 35 to 65.
Initially, they described an association of coronary artery disease with age.
Their main objective, however, was to “seek for relations between the kind of work men do and the incidence among them of coronary artery disease.”
They found that conductors had less coronary artery disease than the drivers. If the conductors did develop disease it was of later onset, manifested differently and was less likely to be fatal. They suggested that “physically active work” offered a protective effect,
In the same paper, Morris and colleagues described similar findings in a group of 110 000 postal workers and civil servants. They demonstrated that postmen who cycled or walked to deliver mail had fewer coronary artery disease events when compared with workers engaged in less intermediate physical activity.
It is difficult to remember a time when regular exercise was not considered essential to an individual’s well-being. The teaching that “some exercise is better than none, while more is better than some” may seem simplistic and obvious today, but it took over 30 years of research before it was accepted.
I recommend you read it.
https://www.bcmj.org/articles/exercise-and-heart-review-early-studies-memory-dr-rs-paffenbarger
It is really important to understand that most of the studies conclude that 1 hour of workout won’t help you if you are sitting all day.
Maybe it is more important to have regular movement, training throughout the whole day.
So here a couple of things you can do:
- Take a break from sitting every 30 minutes.
- Stand while talking on the phone or watching television.
- If you work at a desk, try a standing desk — or improvise with a high table or counter.
- Walk with your colleagues for meetings rather than sitting in a conference room.
So what’s next?
Currently, I am going to the gym 3 days per week and I am preparing a bodyweight program for myself.
Adjusting my diet, more about this in my next videos.
And I plan to challenge myself to do short walks every 40 min of work.
Why I made this video?
First of all as a call to action. If you are sitting all day working and feeling tired the things that help is training. Challenge yourself and results will follow. – Cliché … but true
Also, it is important to gain awareness about our way of living, maybe it is time to change our working environment. It is really difficult for professions like programming and accounting let say, but if our life is on the line we have to make a change!
Hope you liked the video, you can follow me on YouTube, Facebook, Chat-Channels
Sources:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/aging/why-push-ups-help-beat-aging
https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/pushups-everyday
https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/ss/slideshow-sitting-health
https://www.uclahealth.org/spinecenter/ergonomics-prolonged-sitting
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-015-1843-x
Too much sitting linked to heart disease, diabetes, premature death
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28100466
http://www.epi.umn.edu/cvdepi/study-synopsis/london-transport-workers-study/
https://www.bcmj.org/articles/exercise-and-heart-review-early-studies-memory-dr-rs-paffenbarger
• Howard BJ, Balkau B, Thorp AA, Magliano DJ, Shaw JE, Owen N, Dunstan DW. Associations of overall sitting time and TV viewing time with fibrinogen and C reactive protein: the AusDiab study. Br J Sports Med. 2014 Feb 18. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2013-093014. [Epub ahead of print]