Working out at work – or toning while you type

How to exercise while you work

Apparently the average person sits for just short of nine hours every day – although since some of us often manage that by lunchtime, there must be someone else on their feet around the clock.

And while there may be an upsurge in gyms in some parts, there are those of us happy to admit that the last time we had anything to do with exercise it also involved an exercise book.

The excuse is that we’re too busy; we haven’t time for gadding off to the gym when there’s work to be done and a European Championships/Olympics/Sunday Game to be watched on the telly later.

But once in a blue moon, a press release pings into your in-box and it’s so inventive and original that you have to acknowledge it – like one that dropped in recently to show you how to exercise while you work.

Or tone up while you type, workout at work – multi-task your way to a thinner middle.

Best of all – according to personal trainer for Nelsons® arnicare® arnica Cooling Gel, Lucy Wyndham-Read (and there’s a mouthful to get onto a business card) – no one need be any the wiser that you’re expertly typing and toning at the same time.

She calls her first tip “Ice Ice Baby” and this is apparently a quick way of transforming you from a hunchback to swan.

All you have to do it to write the word ‘ice cube’ on a post-it note and stick it on the corner of your computer. Each time you glance at it, imagine someone has dropped an ice cube down your back. You’ll instantly pull back your shoulders and lift up your chest, giving you perfect posture.

Second tip is to try and leave your desk every twenty minutes. This is no problem for most people I know because every time you look at their desk, they’re gone – but this departure is specifically to increase metabolism and improve the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure and break down body fat.

The third tip is complex and involves a level of planning that one presumes a person who cannot find time for the gym doesn’t have in the first place – but it does involve the most important meal of the day…the one they call breakfast.

But it does involve standing – on both legs – when you might otherwise be sitting down, as in when you’re on the phone, you push that chair back and stand upright which will help to engage more of your muscles.

Given that they’ve been so inventive with their product push, it’s only fair to reveal that Nelson’s Cooling Gel is for massaging into tired muscles to revitalise them after a workout – probably of the more traditional kind instead of the one that makes you look to your colleagues like you’re having a fit at your desk.

Fore more tips on staying fit while you work and to find out why past is perfect see more of Dave O’Connell’s column in this week’s Tribune here