I’ve had a few really busy weeks at work. In particular, the week before going away on holiday always seems to be particularly busy, almost as if you need to do the work for the week you’ll be away before you leave.
There have been a few things I’ve been doing over the last few weeks to make sure I could manage what needed to be done at work while still managing to do my workouts:
- keeping the diet clean;
- maintaining good hydration;
- varying standing and sitting;
- avoid wearing heels; and
- plenty of rolling and posture-assistance exercises.
Keeping the diet clean
The workplace is shocking for the temptations of cakes, biscuits and sweets. Our office, like many others, has a series of “cake rules” with various things that give rise to a “cake/sweet charge” such as returning from holiday or birthdays. With a team of twenty people this means that there is nearly always some sort of cake or biscuit collection available to pick at. Other offices have free biscuits or cake available to help keep spirits up amongst the workforce.
I’m a fan of doing things that will motivate people at work but I’ve never understood why the foods that are provided need to be the sorts of foods that can cause weight gain, gut irritation (thus impacting on the immune system) or that frequently make people sleepy – it doesn’t seem to fit with the ultimate aim (motivated and happy staff who are more productive). Brad Pilon had a bit of a rant about this the other week too.
At least our office also provides a big basket of fruit every day, but something that I’ve found is crucial to survive when I’m very busy at work is to avoid anything that isn’t the cleanest paleo foods.
Even paleo-approved cake is off the menu when I'm this busy
Maintaining good hydration
It’s really easy, when you’re distracted by a big pile of work, to forget to fetch more water and drink plenty. However, it is very important to keep hydrated to keep the brain functioning efficiently and to ensure that you will still be capable of good performance at resistance training when you get back home in the evening.
Varying standing and sitting
I really struggle with sitting at a desk all day. It has some dreadful knock on problems for my hip and thoracic spine mobility which impacts on my ability to do certain exercises in the gym at the end of the day. Fortunately for me our office has a set of standing desks (although without phones) which provide me with two benefits:
- I can stand up for part of the day, giving me more chance of managing my workout when I get home; and
- the desks are in a different part of the office and don’t have phones so I can get away from everything to get specific pieces of work done without interruption.
If you want to know a bit more about the health benefits of standing up for some of the time when you’re working, Mark Sisson did a great article with plenty of links to research. He’s also got some good suggestions for setting up standing workstations away from the office too.
Avoiding high heels
This very much goes with the standing and sitting. Sometimes I like to wear a pair of attractive heels to work, however I find that the busier I get, the less I think about my posture when I am moving about the office. As a result, I don’t remember to think about where my weight is thrown when I’m walking with heels on and often end up with a sore back, affecting my workouts at the end of the day. Heels are also a bad idea if you want to work standing up.
The answer for me is to only wear flat-soled shoes when I’m particularly busy at work.
Ideally I'd be barefoot in the office
Rolling and posture-assistance exercises
Despite my best efforts to not wear heels and to get up and move about as much as possible, busy periods at work still result in tightness across my shoulders, thoracic spine and hips. The best answer for this is plenty of rolling to stop knots from building up in the muscles.
Another useful way to counteract the poor posture that comes from hours of dedicated desk-work is to build into your workout some assistance exercises that strengthen opposing muscles (like the bent over row, which strengthens the muscles that pull your shoulders back from the “desk hunch”) or that help mobilise those muscles that have tightened (like the Romanian deadlift, which helps mobilise the hips).
Bringing it all together
Combining a dedicated desk job and a desire to maintain good posture and improved performance in the gym is always a juggling act, but there are a few things you can do. Hopefully this article has provided you with ideas based on the areas that I focus my attention on when I’m busy.
Now I just need to work out what I can find on a cycle tour in Scotland this week to pay my “cake debt” when I get back to the office. Any suggestions for cheap but healthy alternatives?
Related posts:
No Comments so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.