Very few of them are acute injuries, while many of them are overuse or repetitive stress/strain in nature.

While undertaking a clinical history during the assessment, I’ve noticed that for a vast majority of people, the one dangerous (in)activity that they do on a regular basis for prolonged periods of time is sitting.

The Dangers of Sitting

And most people unknowingly considered this a fairly benign part of their daily life.

As I’ve stated before, this typically starts in the morning at the breakfast table (for those that even have breakfast!), then continues on with the commute to work or school, then the sitting continues until lunch where more of this dangerous sitting business will take place.

Then, after lunch, most people will return to their desks, chairs and various seating apparatus to carry on with the same form of sitting that they completed all morning. At the end of the workday, the seated and sedentary commute home is initiated.

And with the arrival at home, the television is switched on for some well deserved post-work relaxation before supper, which will take place while seated. Post-supper, the same posteriors are plunked back down in those plush couches for some more TV viewing.

Then the same process takes place the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

While the above may not apply to everyone, there are a significant number of people who would have no difficulty in seeing their daily routine played out as noted.

I know this happens because these are the same stories I hear in my clinical physiotherapy practice everyday.

Here’s the rub…

This pattern of inactivity which plays out in millions of lives every day has fairly serious health consequences.

I recently came across an editorial press release for the British Journal of Sports Medicine entitled: “Are we facing a new paradigm of inactivity physiology?” that nicely sums up some of these dangers.

In the editorial the authors discuss how recent studies have suggested that long periods of sitting and “whole-body” inactivity (what we term sedentary behaviour) are “strongly associated with obesity, abnormal glucose metabolism, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and cancer, as well as total mortality.”

I don’t know about you, but I definitely feel that those are some pretty serious consequences from the simple act of sitting for too long.

The authors propose their new paradigm which consists of the following four tenets:

1. Sitting and limiting non-exercise activity may independently increase disease risk

2. Sedentary behaviour is a distinct class of behaviour with specific determinants and effects on disease risk, separate from the behaviour of leisure-time exercise.

3. The molecular and physiological responses in the human body of too much sitting are not always the same as the responses that follow a bout of additional physical exercise.

4. People already insufficiently physically active will increase their risk even further by prolonged sitting time.

As the authors conclude, there are actually two behaviours (and their resulting effects) that we need to address:

1. The benefits of regular moderate to vigorous intensity physical exercise

2. The risks of too much sitting and limited non-exercise everyday life activity

So what can you do about it and how can you avoid these serious dangers of sitting for too long?

In the next few blog posts, I’ll work through the above two issues and give you some simple tips and strategies that you can immediately incorporate into your daily life to help stave off these deadly sitting related health issues.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

What’s your reason?

Do you go out for your jog because you enjoy it?

If you do, good for you.

I’m all for physical activity that keeps you interested. If you do what you love, it’s a hell of a lot easier to keep doing it.

And in the end that’s really what matters.

Consistency is what brings results.

Now if you’re pounding the pavement under the extremely erroneous assumption that running is the best form of cardio exercise or that it’s the best way to get in shape, then it’s time to question your potentially harmful thoughts and their validity.

Warning: The following line may cause avid runners to take up arms and crucify me. But what’s life without a little controversy, right?

I’m here to tell you that running is NOT the best way to get in shape.

And it’s definitely not the only way, nor the optimal way, to improve your cardiovascular fitness.

You don’t need to put your bones, joints and tissues under that sort of crushing repetitive stress for that period of time, to feel better or improve how your body looks.

As I said before, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t run.

I’m just saying that before you take up running, try to figure out why you’re doing it.

If after careful consideration you realize that you don’t actually enjoy running but you’re doing it because “everyone” says you need to do “cardio” to lose fat, all is not lost.

I would simply suggest not starting.

In fact, you’ve probably saved yourself some overuse sprains and strains. And a lot of wasted time and effort.

So now that you’re aware of repetitive dangers of running, that doesn’t mean you need to stop doing it.

If you are of that group of people who loves to run and gets that runner’s high, or you are of that group who still wants to keep on running no matter what the cost, just make sure that your body is fit to run and can tolerate the impact of your chosen activity.

Since I’ve taken up all my blogspace today with my stance on running, I’ll save the actual body buffering exercises for my next post.

Until then I’d like to hear what you have to say about running. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

I’ve yet to meet a runner of any sort who hasn’t dealt with an overuse type injury yet!

So what does that mean exactly?

Well, because running is an extremely complex biomechanical action, there are many places where faults, errors or compensations can take place. Multiply these by the number of reps (in the case of running, each foot strike can be considered a rep) that can be undertaken in a short period of time.

To make matters even worse, most recreational runners start their day by sitting in their cars, buses or trains to work, sit at a desk all day, rush home in the same manner and then warm-up with some basic static stretches for a few minutes before pounding the pavement.

They spend all day inhibiting their hips and then asking those very same inhibited tissues to respond to forces that are equivalent to multiple times their body weight (which is often greater than what it should be as well!).

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way and the response is not the one that they were looking for.

What happens is that the hips don’t work properly, thus causing the body to compensate at the joints above or below.

For example, if there is a loss of hip extension, the body will create the required extension movement through the back. So for every step of your run, you’re compressing your facet joints. Multiply this by thousands of steps. Each one causing just a little bit more irritation to those joints in your back.

Or, if there is hip abductor weakness and the leg is unstable, this will cause the leg to slightly bow in or go into what we call a valgus position with every landing. If every time that type of landing irritates the tissues on the inside of the knee, think how irritated it would become if you took 2000, 3000 or more steps.

And this is why runners should really care about their hips. And that’s also why runners should get fit to run, and not the other way around.

I’ll leave you to ponder those thoughts and let that sink in.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath