Muscle Response After Sitting
- pungellodc
- Mar 30, 2020
- 2 min read
One of the biggest issues with exercise is doing so in a safe way that prevents injuries. This includes time spent exercising and time spent before and after exercising. We need to properly prepare ourselves before exercising in order to insure injury prevention. Unfortunately we spend a lot of time sitting at desks or on the couch. It is not uncommon for people to spend a full day sitting in an office or classroom chair and then hit the gym after 8 hours in a chair. It is great that we are going to exercise but proper precaution must be taken after sitting for so long.
As we sit in a flexed position the muscles of our lower back and neck are put into a stretched position. Within these muscles we have receptors known as muscle spindles. Muscle spindles constantly send information back to the brain about how long the muscle is at any given moment. Research has shown that muscle spindles being stretched out for long periods of time, such as during a work or school day, cause the muscle to react slower to a sudden load. In one study they had participants sit in a flexed position for 1 hour and then tested the reaction time of their muscles before and after. The muscles tested after sitting for a prolonged period of time reacted much slower very consistently. A similar study was done in the cervical spine with only 10 minutes of neck flexion causing similar poor results for reaction time!
This means that going to the gym after sitting all day and then lifting weights will be more less advantageous since your muscles will not react as well to the increases in load. This does NOT mean you should avoid the gym, it just means you must prepare yourself through out the day. If the muscles don’t activate as well you are putting your spine and other joints in a compromised position without the protection from the surrounding musculature. In order to proactively avoid this, make sure to stand up and take a walk at least once an hour while at work/school and try to time your workouts around your work schedule.
YOU NEED TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY FOR IT TO TAKE CARE OF YOU!!!!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29573794
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