The Office Effect

For many people, the demands of work, family, and life in general can have some serious health implications.   If you are stuck in an office for 8-12 hours a day, you may find it difficult to make time to go to the gym, prepare healthy meals, or address certain health issues that can lead to problems down the road, such as poor posture.  Suddenly you realize that you are carrying extra weight, living with chronic neck and back pain, and constantly complaining about fatigue and low energy.

This cycle of neglect is easy to overlook and hard to break.   You know that you could lose a few pounds.  You know that you could improve your posture.  You may even know that having that cocktail or glass of wine everyday after work is not the healthiest choice.  However, after a long day it’s easier to just ignore these issues than to face them.  It’s even harder to face them if the cycle of neglect has been going on for months or even years.  So how do you reverse this unhealthy pattern of behavior?

The answer is positively Newtonian…bodies at rest vs. bodies in motion.  The hardest part is beginning the motion.  As a trainer, I teach my clients to set realistic, attainable goals.  If someone needs to lose 100 pounds, it may seem like an impossible task.  So we forget about that in the beginning and focus on the first 5 pounds instead.  The same principle applies to transitioning from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one.  TAKE THE FIRST STEP, NO MATTER HOW SMALL IT MAY BE!

Here are 5 easy ways to go from being a body at rest to a body in motion:

1) Health-ify your office.  Healthify isn’t a word yet but it should be.  Take stock of your workstation and make some simple changes.  Rearrange your desk to make it more ergonomically correct (go to www.theofficeeffect.com/solutions for more info) and put a case of bottled water within reach.  This will take just a few minutes but will have a profound effect on your posture and well being.

2) Take walking breaks.  It’s easy…get up, move away from your desk, and take a short walk.  Whether it’s around the office, around the building, or around the park, a short walk will ease the tension in your lower back, increase your circulation, and stimulate your mind.  Some of my clients have taken it a step further and are taking a ‘walking lunch.’  They pack their own lunch and snack on it throughout the day.  This allows them to use their lunch break to plug into their iPod and walk for at least a half an hour.   They have experienced weight loss, more energy, and a feeling that the day goes by much quicker.

3)  Earn your cocktails.  You may think that working all day, dealing with stress, and meeting deadlines is enough to earn you that after-work drink.  You may be right.  However, adding booze to an already sedentary and stressful day will only make it that much more unhealthy.  Try skipping the bar after work and going for a bike ride instead.  Maybe walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes and set the incline up one full notch for every drink that you are planning on having.  Alcohol (though delicious and fun) is empty calories and is a gateway to other empty calories such as pizza, pretzels, and chips.  You don’t have to stop enjoying the finer things in life, but you’ll enjoy them longer if you can find a balance between healthy behavior and recreational behavior.

4) Have a sugar-free day.  Pick one day a week to be your sugar-free day.  That means water instead of soda, carrots instead of candy bars, and chamomile tea instead of ice cream.  Come on people, it’s just one day!  Sugar is a leading cause of obesity and many of us casually consume way too much of it.  Having one sugar-free day a week will make you more aware of how much you normally consume and will teach you how to overcome the those powerful cravings.  You never know, a sugar-free day may lead to a sugar-free week or even a sugar-free year.

5) Go to bed early for one week.   Most people don’t realize just how important it is to get a good night sleep.  Weight gain, moodiness, and fatigue are all symptoms of poor sleeping habits and can have consequences at work and at home.  For one week, just one little week, try going to bed at the same time every night that allows you to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep.  Instead of staying up until 1am watching TV, turn it off at 11pm and save some of those shows that you recorded for the weekend.  Seriously folks, getting enough sleep can change your life so try it for a week and see how you feel.

There are hundreds, even thousands of ways to start living a healthier lifestyle but let’s keep it simple.  Even if you just pick one of these 5 suggestions and follow through with it, that’s good enough.  The whole point is to get the ball rolling, to get the train moving down the tracks, to get the wheels turning…to become a body in motion.  No time like the present, right?  Now that you’ve finished reading this, get up and go take a five-minute walk.  It won’t kill you, and it could be the most important steps you’ve ever taken.  Live healthy, my friends.

by: Matt Williamson, Author of The Office Effect, Easy Solutions for Work Related Pain.

There are a lot of helpful hints out there to get out of pain, but not all of them are actually helpful.  I want to point out five things I’ve either heard from clients or read in articles that, in my research and 14 years of working in physical rehabilitation, have proven not to be such great advice.

1.  If your back or neck is soar, just stretch it.

Time and time again I see clients who stretch their neck or lower back when they are in pain.  It makes sense.  You’re stiff and tight so those tense muscles must be why you’re hurting.  Many times, however, this is not the case.

You must first ask yourself, “Why is my neck or back tight?”  If you happen to sit at a desk for hours on end, it is probably because your out-stretched neck or rounded lower back is causing the relative muscles of that area to be over extended in a constant contracted state.  So the muscles throw a temper tantrum and recoil into a tight, painful spasm.  If you stretch your neck or lower back muscles it may feel good for an hour or so but then they spasm again because you just did the one thing they have been fighting against – being stretched out of their normal functional position.

If you have a back herniation or bulging disc (and you may not even know you have one) the muscles around the herniation will tend to tighten up and spasm in order to protect the area of injury by limiting your motion.  If you stretch that area and therefore increase the range of motion you can actually cause the discs to bulge or herniate further, increasing the severity of your injury.  In this case, you’d be doing the exact thing your body was trying to prevent you from doing and the whole reason it was saying “Hello!” with its warning of pain and stiffness.  If you’ve been wondering why stretching has only been giving you temporary relief, with even more pain resulting later…well, now you have your answer.

2.  If you are in pain, just rest for a while.

In some cases this can be true, like if you have tendonitis or if you’re in spasm from simply overworking your muscles.  However, if your lower back is in spasm because you have a herniation or disc starting to bulge because you’ve been sitting at your desk all day with a rounded lower back, then laying down can actually make things worse.  When you lay down it allows the injured disc in your spine to swell even more, causing you more intense pain as your nerves get pinched.  Research shows that doing proper exercises can actually reduce your pain.  In my experience, there has never been a time that a client has come to me in some sort of pain, be it that gnawing pain in their lower back and hip or the aching strain in their upper back, and felt worse from proper exercises.  They always smile as they leave saying, “Wow, I was afraid to workout but I feel great now!”

3.  Core work is all you need to relieve your back pain.

This might be true if most people, including trainers, realized the core is more than your abs.  If you think the core is just your six-pack, then doing crunches to strengthen your ‘core’ can actually weaken your back and increase your chances for injuries such as herniations, bulging discs, and strains.  If, when doing ab work, you flatten your lower back into the floor and/or pull your chin to your chest your chances for injuries to your spine quadruples.  Even if you do your ab work ‘properly’ but you still only work out your six-pack and maybe even add in some oblique rotations, you are still putting your lower back at greater risk of injury then not doing ab work.  I know, you’re like, “Say what?” but it is true and there are doctors and studies to prove it (check out this article in the NY Times ).

Webster’s Dictionary defines the core as, “The central or most important part of something.”  I believe the central and most important part of the body, or core, is from your ribcage to just below your groin and 360 degrees around your torso.  This includes the muscles surrounding the hips (glutes and hip flexors), inner and outer thighs, mid to lower back, oblique’s (muscles on the side of the torso), the transverse muscle (which is the deepest abdominal muscles surrounding the torso from the hips to the ribcage), and yes, your six-pack (rectus abdominus).  When all of these core muscles are balanced through equal strengthening then your can relieve and prevent lower back pain, and much, much more. 

4.  Using a fitness ball for a chair is great from your posture.

Man, if only I had a dollar for every time I was asked this or saw it mentioned in an article.  This unstable, unsupported device will force you to sit up straight and work your muscles in order to maintain stability so you don’t plop on the floor. The problem is, if you don’t have the muscular strength to hold that proper posture or you simply aren’t paying attention, the fitness ball can cause you to have even worse posture or painful tension in muscles then an actual chair.  If you sit properly with your back against a chair and allow it’s lumbar support to actually work for you, it can defuse some of the muscular stress put on your body from sitting for hours.  There is no support when using a ball and therefore no help unless you actually pay attention to how you are sitting and make sure you do it properly.  It’s a trial by fire type of thing, which is great, if you’re up for the challenge.  The great thing about the ball, is if you do use it well, it will stimulate your leg, back, and core muscles, which is a plus.  However, if you don’t pay attention or don’t have the strength, it can ruin you.

5.  A glass of wine can take the edge off your pain.

You had a long day at work and your lower back is killing you so you pop open a bottle of wine to ease your pain.  Or, you twist your ankle at the office softball game and you go home, throw a pack of frozen pees on it and grab a beer.  Yes, alcohol can temporarily make your pain go away but in the end, it can hurt you more.  Alcohol thins the blood and allows for greater swelling of an injured area; weather it be a swollen disc in your lower back or a swollen ankle.

So ask yourself, is the temporary relief of an alcohol buzz worth an ankle the size of a cantaloupe later.

by: Craig Zuckerman, Author of The Office Effect, Easy Solutions for Work Related Pain.

One of my clients came to me and she was twisted, literally. Her right hip was lifted and rotated forward, causing her upper torso to face one way and her hips to face another. She was experiencing pain in her lower back and hip. I first asked if she had been in an accident or had any injuries and she said, “No.” Without an inciting incident for her twist, I knew it was probably a repetitive stress that was causing her pain and body rotation. I had a good idea that it had to be something she was doing on a daily basis to cause such a noticeable problem. Since most people spend the majority of their time at work, I knew that would be a good place to start looking for the possible cause. So I asked her what a typical day at the office was like. She said she spent most of her time at her desk, receiving phone calls and faxes because she worked in a billing department. I had a hunch so I asked about how many faxes she received per day. She said, around forty to fifty. I then asked where her fax machine was located. She said it was at the back right corner of her desk. Finally, I asked if she had a swivel chair. She replied, “No.” I smiled, knowing that we had found the cause of her twist and pain.

Because her chair didn’t swivel, she had to twist her body to the right forty to fifty times a day, five days a week, in order to grab the incoming faxes. That’s as many as one thousand repetitions a month—and she had been doing this job for over six months. This caused her to continually contract the rotational muscles of her torso, but only on the right side of her body. So the right side became over developed, pulling and twisting her hips off and causing her pain.

I had her get a swivel chair so she no longer rotated her body and instead rotated the chair. I then had her do a rotation exercise to work her obliques, called the Seated Twists, but only to the left for a few weeks to combat all the right side rotations she had been doing for months. After that, I gave her The Office Effect 10 Minute Exercise Program so she could keep her body balanced, no matter what she happened to do at work. In one month, her twist was gone and she was out of pain.

by: Craig Zuckerman, Author of The Office Effect, Easy Solutions for Work Related Pain.

As a personal trainer, I have seen hundreds of clients over the years and almost all of them share one characteristic…bad posture.  It’s an epidemic!  When did we become a nation of slouchers?  More importantly, when did we stop caring about how we carry ourselves?  I only ask because almost everyone that I speak to about it says the same thing, “I know.  I have bad posture.”  Like it’s no big deal.  Like it’s just a fact and there’s nothing they can do about it.  The truth is, posture is a big deal and there is something you can do about it.

I know I’m on my soapbox here, but posture really does have huge impact on how you look and feel.  So what can you do about it?  Well, for lasting results I recommend a comprehensive exercise program that targets the entire core as well as the musculature of the upper-back and shoulders.  That may seem like a pretty intimidating first step so let’s start with something a bit easier.   Here are 5 very simple things that you can start doing right now to put yourself back on the road to proper posture and alignment:

1. Be aware of your daily habits. Awareness is always the first step.  Start taking a closer look at how you carry yourself throughout the day.  How do you sit in your car?  Try sitting up straight and readjusting your mirrors.  How do you sit at your desk?  Check out www.theofficeeffect.com/solutions.php for some quick tips on how to make your desk more posture friendly.   How do you relax at home?  If you spend several hours a day watching TV on your overstuffed sofa, you may be slowly damaging your spine.  Try putting a pillow behind your lower back to help your spine maintain its natural S-curve.  Correct posture may feel a little uncomfortable at first, but the more you practice the easier it will get, and the longer you will be able to maintain it.
2. Take a walk. Many people spend the majority of their day in a seated position, and more often than not, in an incorrect seated position.  This can wreak havoc on the muscles in your lower back and core.  A great way to prevent this is simply to walk more.  Walking stimulates and strengthens the muscles that stabilize and support your body.   Think about how many times you go from sitting in your office, to sitting in your car, to sitting on your couch.  Try breaking that routine with a couple of short walks.  A method that worked for one of my clients was to begin and end her workday with a walk.  She set her alarm 15 minute earlier and walked to her local coffee shop instead setting her coffee pot to brew automatically.  When she came home from work, she immediately took a walk around her neighborhood and listened to music.  Not only was it a healthy way to decompress at the end of the day, it was also a great excuse to adopt a dog.  Better posture and a new best friend!
3. Set an alarm at your desk. Sometimes all we need to make a healthy change is a little reminder.   Most of the time we don’t think about our posture until it becomes painful.  Why let it get to that point?  Try setting an alarm on your watch or desk to go off every hour or two as a gentle reminder to check in with your body.  Make sure the alarm isn’t annoying or irritating in any way because fixing yourself should be a positive experience.  If you’re not a fan of alarms, try something as simple as a post-it note to yourself, a screen saver, or even a bracelet that reminds you that good posture looks and feels better.
4. Get a posture buddy at work. Try making proper posture a team sport.  Getting healthy is always easier with a little help from your friends.   I have two clients who work together in the same office, so I suggested that they look out for each other’s posture throughout the day.  The most amazing thing happened…their entire office joined in.  They told me that it quickly became a “thing’ for everyone to keep an eye out for bad posture and to compliment good posture.   They even started organizing group walks and yoga classes!  It goes to show, that all it takes to change your entire environment is a single step.
5. Practice in the mirror. Think of the mirror as your friend and advisor.  It’s job is to give you honest feedback and help you look your best.  Clear your mind of all negative thoughts and take a good long look at yourself.  Now try these simple adjustments:

• Draw your bellybutton toward your spine about 1 inch to activate your core stabilizer muscles.
• Check your hands.  If you can see the backs of your hands in the mirror, it probably means that your shoulders are rolled forward and down.  Gently elevate and open your chest, allowing your shoulders to ease back and down.  Don’t try to pull too hard, just imagine that your chest is smiling.
• Do you have a neck?  Or does your head meet your shoulders in a tight bundle of over-stressed muscles?   Hours spent in front of a computer have a tendency to pull the head forward and strain the muscles of the neck and shoulders.  As you ease your shoulders back and down and open your chest, gently draw your chin back an inch or so toward your spine and imagine your head floating on top of your neck.

Remember, these are small, gentle adjustments.  If you try to force it you will just create more tension.  It may feel strange at first, but try making it part of your morning routine.

Your posture affects how you feel about yourself and how others see you.   Try these simple tips for a couple of weeks and you may be amazed by what you discover.  Many of my clients who have committed to fixing their posture have come to me with the same story…people notice a difference.  Suddenly their coworkers are asking if they have lost weight, changed their hair, or met someone because they just look…happier.  And that’s always a good thing.

Be healthy my friends!

by: Matt Williamson, Author of The Office Effect, Easy Solutions for Work Related Pain.

Many of my clients email me with strange pains that pop up, and they have no idea why they happened or what to do about them.  Here is a stream of emails from my client Lisa, who is a 28-year-old Producer for a popular TV show. Together we used The Office Effect’s, 3F’s Method (Feel It, Find It, Fix It) to relieve her pain.

• Lisa:  “Hi! Ok so my neck is totally tweaked and I’m not sure what caused it. And of course I’m camping this weekend! Any suggestions? I can barely turn my head right.”

Lisa has already done the first step in the 3F’s Method, Feel It.  She identified her pain and even figured out that her neck was most painful when attempting to turn her head to the right.  This is a great clue!  Now it’s time to put our detective hats on and look for the repetitive stresses in Lisa’s life that may be causing this newfound pain.

• Craig:  Is there any new activities you have been doing over the last few days/weeks?
• Lisa:  I started swimming laps the other day but that’s the only new thing that I can think of.
• Craig:  When you breathed as you swam, which side did you turn your head towards?  This may be a good indicated as to what happened. This will help me know how better to assist you.
• Lisa:  I turned my head to the right every time and the right side is screwed up. Feels super tight.

We had completed step two in the 3F’s Method, Find It.  We used our detective work, asked questions, and found the repetitive stress that had caused Lisa’s pain – repeated rotations of her head to the right side.  All it took was one day of this repetitive stress to cause her excruciating pain.  When a repetitive stress happens, specifically when you have an activity in which you move in one direction, only one set of muscles of a joint to activate. The body usually reacts in two ways.  Either the muscles that move your body in that direction (in Lisa’s case, the rotation muscles on the right side of her neck) spasm, knot up, and cause pain do to overwork.  Or, the muscles opposite of the working muscles go into spasm due to lack of strength.  This is all a part of Counter Muscle Balancing.  If the muscles on one side of a joint (the joint being the multiple vertebrae in Lisa’s neck) are overworked, the opposite muscles spasm in an attempt to balance the joint or pull it back to its balanced state.  This is usually a loosing battle since the muscle on one side of the joint is stronger from repetitive work. so The weaker side then struggles for balance, causing it to spasm.

These first two steps of the 3F’s Method are crucial in order to formulate what to do for the third step, Fix It.  Knowing what side of Lisa’s neck was causing her pain and what movements exacerbated her pain was imperative to deduce what she needed to do to resolve her issue.  Why?  Because sometimes you can feel pain on the opposite side of the actual injured area.  By following the first 2 steps of the 3F’s Method and understanding Counter Muscle Balancing it was easy to know exactly what to do in order to Fix It.

• Craig:  I think we’ve found the culprit!  If you always rotated your head to one side that would strain the muscles on one side of your neck because of over-work and lack of Counter Muscle Balancing.  Mystery solved .
• To fix it, every couple of hours do 10-15 reps, 3-5 sets of head rotations to the opposite side (the left).  Do it in a range of motion where you feel the least amount of pain.
• You can also try putting heat on the right side of your neck for 5 minutes or so before doing the exercises.  This will help to loosen the muscles on the right side of your neck that are in spasm.
• Be sure NOT to over-do-it with the new neck exercises and keep me posted on your progress.  All exercise work should be relatively pain free.  If you feel an increase in pain let me know and we can re-evaluate you situation to see what’s happening.

We now knew the muscles on the right side of Lisa’s neck were overworked from multiple turns to the right in order to breathe while swimming.   These muscle spasms were causing her considerable pain and reduced mobility in her neck.  To fix it, Lisa needed to exercise the muscles on the left side to balance the newly strengthened right side.  Once the muscles on the left become strong enough to balance out the overworked muscles of the right, her pain and immobility of her neck should go away.

Two days later I received this email:

• Lisa: The neck is fine!! Did what u said! Yay!!

This fix can last a lifetime because now Lisa is armed with the knowledge to relieve pain, herself.  If she would have just taken pain medication and never used the 3F’s, the lack of mobility in her neck would have increased, possibly causing headaches, numbness and tingling in her fingers, or worse.

by: Craig Zuckerman, Author of The Office Effect, Easy Solutions for Work Related Pain.

I had a client who came to me with sciatic pain running down her right leg. When I asked her what her daily routine was, she said she spends about six-plus hours a day in front of her computer for work, and that’s usually when the pain started to kick in.

I knew that Sciatica is commonly caused by the piriformis muscle in the buttocks spasming. So I asked if she happened to sit at her desk with her right leg crossed often. She thought for a second and then replied, “Yes, I do. In fact, I always cross my right leg. How did you know?” I then replied, “I’m psychic!” I, of course, was kidding.

The piriformis muscle rotates the leg outward, but when you sit with your legs crossed for long periods of time, the muscle gets put into a stretched position, weakening it and destabilizing the pelvis. Often times, the piriformis then seizes up or spasms which in turn causes it to pinch down on the sciatic nerve, causing Sciatica. So I had my client stop crossing her legs and showed her some simple exercises to strengthen the muscles around her hips, pelvis, and lower back, including the piriformis. After two weeks, all her pain had gone.

Now, if any of her symptoms flair up, like after a long day at her computer where she may not be so conscious of her posture, she takes a break, does The Office Effect 10 Minute Exercise Program and her pain goes away. She even showed her husband some of the exercises when he had back pain, after working in the yard, and he got some pain relief too!

by: Craig Zuckerman, Author of The Office Effect, Easy Solutions for Work Related Pain.