I work a very sedentary desk job. I don’t get much more exercise than walking to the bathroom and back. I can try to walk more briskly but that doesn’t do too much. My weakest area is my arms and upper body in general. Okay, I have typing fingers of steel, but that’s not quite the same. What’s a bored customer service rep to do?
Use my muscles against each other! By pressing my hands together as hard as I can, then moving them in circles or up and down, I can work my biceps, triceps, wrists and forearms. These, and other movements that can be static or moving, challenge me almost as much as if I were picking up large pieces of metal and putting them down again.
By grasping the side of my cube and moving myself with my hands only, I can work my arms and shoulders. I can do chair dips in my office chair – I admit, mostly in the evenings when people aren’t around. I can also put my hands under my desk and press up, letting that act like a biceps curl. I can also do spine twists, or arch my spine forward and back for a bit of a stretch. Sometimes I do leg raises under the desk.
With ingenuity and determination, it’s amazing how much upper body exercise you can get at work.
