Sitting in chairs is at times an unavoidable fact of the modern life but it doesn’t mean our bodies are doomed. Just so long as we sit with awareness of body positioning and sequencing in and out of the chair. I’ll do you one better and make the act of sitting and standing up from a chair a legitimate therapeutic strengthening exercise if done with care. We must begin looking at every detail of our lives as an opportunity to practice optimal movement.
Sitting is a perfect opportunity to hinge at your hips and engage your glutes which very likely have been under utilized if you’ve spent much time sitting in a chair (like almost all of your time in school/commuting). Keep your knees wide creating an outward rotation in the hips and activating the arches of the feet allowing the knees to track in alignment. Squeeze the butt to be sure you are fully engaging your glutes and not allowing your potentially bossy quadriceps from hogging all the good work. Make sure your spine stays long and neutral during the whole phase of movement and see if you can sit and stand with zero momentum to help you through the transition. Be thinking “seamless movement” free of clunky transitions through every moment of the day. Enjoy moving seamlessly!
