Is Sitting All Day Really That Bad For A Runner?

Of all the pieces of advice runners hear from professionals trying to explain injury and performance issues, ‘sitting down for too long causes your hip flexors to shorten or hip flexor tendonitis’ must be up there in the top ten.

With the busy, work lives many of us lead in front of computers, telephones and steering wheels, trying to take more regular ‘stand up’ breaks often proves to be a lot trickier than one may imagine.

The easier alternative most runners do manage is finding time during the week to perform hip stretches for runners, in the hope that will counterbalance the longer period of time spent sitting down.

But is this enough?

Will a few weekly sets of static stretching prevent our hip flexors from seizing up and is sitting is bad for you?

Let’s take a look at the evidence.

Does Sitting Too Long Tighten up Your Hip Flexors?

First and foremost, let’s clear something up:

Sitting down for extended periods of time is very unlikely to shorten your hip flexors.

Actually, that’s not quite true:

The tissues may well shorten temporarily but any long term effect will be cancelled out by you simply getting up now and again, which let’s face it, most of us do to either go to the bathroom, get a piece of paper from the printer or get a drink.

Research shows that completely immobilizing a joint for an extended period of time can indeed cause shortening and hardening of muscles and connective tissue, but any significant physical reduction in tissue length can be avoided by performing short, infrequent bouts of movement.

It is very unlikely that sitting down all day at work will cause your hips to seize up.

Does Sitting Down All Day Do Any Damage to Runners?

No, as long as it’s not for too long – otherwise you can get cancer.

I say this with sarcasm (hopefully it was obvious), but there is actually some research that suggests sitting down for long, uninterrupted periods of time can elevate risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

This should not come as much of a surprise to runners;

It’s one of the reasons most of us started running in the first place.

Getting a run in before or after work and at the weekends saves us from the serious health risks that prey on our ever increasing sedentary population.

However, research also brings with it a slight spin that may leave us runners feeling slightly less bullet proof as we take to the roads after a long day in the office.

Some of you may recall the headlines from 2012 declaring that ‘Sitting Is The New Smoking.’

Though the analogy is clearly an exaggeration and one made to increase sales of magazines, there is actually a fair reason for the comparison to have emerged.

A systematic review in 2015 entitled ‘Sedentary Time and Its Association With Risk for Disease Incidence, Mortality, and Hospitalization in Adults’ (Biswas, A. et al) concluded that the elevated health risks caused by long bouts of uninterrupted sitting are not necessarily counterbalanced by exercise outside of work.

In other words, runners managing to exercise before or after work or at the weekends may not have a free ticket to sit down as long as they want at work.

Studies go on to suggest that for most people, it is actually impossible to do enough exercise outside of work to counteract the potential harm caused by long, uninterrupted periods of sitting down.

“It’s a bit like smoking…” said Professor Travis Saunders, founder the Sedentary Behavior Research Network. “Smoking is bad for you even if you get lots of exercise. So is sitting too much.”

Why Sitting Down Can Be Detrimental to Our Health

The human body is a fantastically robust piece of machinery.

It’s quite incredible how resilient and adaptable we are.

Of course sitting down doesn’t make permanent changes to tissue length – if that were true we would all be far more chair shaped.

However, our tremendous resilience is fuelled by movement and more specifically adaptive reaction to stimuli.

For example, the ground impact caused by running has been shown to stimulate bone growth, to the extent that research now clearly shows that whereas once running was cursed as a cause of arthritis and joint issues, appropriate levels of running can significantly reduce arthritis and risk of hip replacement.

Take away the stimuli, however, and your body stops adapting because basically it no longer needs to.

Soft tissue like muscles, tendon and ligaments are also though to adapt to stress in this way.

Long, repeated periods of immobility can cause metabolic levels to drop.

Circulation slows down, especially in the legs, less blood sugar is used and less fat is used for fuel.

Although alone this is unlikely to significantly elevate risk of heart disease or diabetes (people in wheel chairs seated all day long do not seem more prone to these diseases), if combined with other factors the elevation in risk could have significant consequences.

Though it is important that we do not suddenly panic the whole nation into never sitting down again, those of us who do spend eight or more hours a day seated should pay heed to the fact that a lifestyle change could be extremely beneficial, regardless of our age, body weight, or how much we run.

How To Successfully Reduce Sitting Time

We mentioned earlier that for many of us, taking regular breaks at work (even if we work from home) can be a big challenge.

If the research is right in saying that exercise before or after work does not counterbalance the hours we spend sitting down, we need to face up to the fact that we have to find a way to break the habit.

Having worked closely with many office teams and managers on how to make this happen, here are a few tips that may well help you get those active breaks:

Change Needs To Come From The Top

For those of us who do work in an office, it is important to realise that any change in office practice needs to come from the top.

The most common reason for employees staying seated for hours on end is that’s what they believe is expected of them.

Standing up for a quick walk around every hour or so could well be interpreted by the powers that be as inconsistent effort or signs of poor productivity.

And yet, the number one drain on company profits is so often staff absence due to sickness or stress.

Sitting down whilst tackling spreadsheets, talking on the phone or attending a meeting is a heavily ingrained habit and as with any habit, overcoming it requires consistent support and reinforcement.

A visit from an external professional twice a month for thirty minutes to take staff through some exercises can be a fantastic way for a company to not only encourage regular activity breaks but also let their workforce know that they care.

Team activities empower staff to no longer feel awkward about getting up every hour for a quick walk or some mobility exercises.

Don’t Believe The Good Posture Hype

Before we get into what type of activity you should be doing during your breaks from sitting, it is important to clear up another myth:

Most companies believe that the way to keep staff healthy and pain free is encouraging ‘good sitting posture’ and finding the best chair for back pain through ‘ergonomic workstations’.

Unfortunately, there really is no evidence to suggest that any of this helps.

Studies clearly show that it is highly unlikely there is any such thing as the ‘perfect sitting posture.’ This means there is probably no such thing as the perfect chair, desk height, screen height, wrist support, etc.

At the end of the day, selling the idea that there is a perfect sitting posture simply encourages staff to spend more time sitting down.

A change of chair or desk setup may see some people’s aches and pains disappear but the fact that others report either no benefit or only short term relief suggests that we have to look further than anecdotal evidence.

Being in any position for an extended period of time is likely to cause discomfort. P

oor posture is not the issue – lack of movement and stimulation is.

In the words of Morgan Freeman (yes, you read that right): “Your best posture is your next posture.”

One Minute Walk Every Hour

Whether you are in an office or working at home, one good way to start breaking the sitting down habit is getting up for one minute every hour for a quick walk about.

To many people (especially managers and bosses), the idea of standing up and going for a walk around every hour sounds like a crazy waste of time and far too many breaks to have in one day.

But in reality, these minutes are not a break from work; they are part of staying fit for work.

Stuart McGill, Ph.D., professor of spine mechanics at the University of Waterloo, is a keen advocate of interrupting your sedentary time as often as possible and making frequent posture changes, saying “even breaks as short as one minute can improve your health.”

As far as losing potential selling time, for most people having a walk around for one minute every hour totals to less than ten minutes a day.

And embracing this new, simple office etiquette can potentially save companies a small fortune in terms of revenue lost due to staff sickness and absence.

Think Mobility, Not Stretching.

Once you have managed to get into the habit of standing up every hour for a walk, it’s time to get a bit more out of your activity break.

This is where we need to remind ourselves that static stretching is probably not the way to go.

We have already discussed the fact that ‘shortening of muscles’ is not the issue here.

Given what we now know about the role of the nervous system in tissue extensibility and pain, one could argue that getting into and out of a stretch position may well be more beneficial than the time spent holding the stretch.

If the problem with sitting for too long is, as the research suggests, a slowing down of your metabolism, getting up and moving about will serve much more than holding a few static stretches.

One practical way of implementing the above is take the traditional static stretches that appear on the infamous ‘perfect posture posters’ and then instead of holding them for 30 seconds instead get into and out of the position a few times.

For example, rather than kneeling down to hold a hip flexor stretch for 30 seconds, perform the stretch for a few seconds then get up again. Now do that again 12 times.

Feels like too much hard work?

Great, that’s called getting your metabolism going!

Also, try not to see maximum range as your goal; touching your toes is not a skill and certainly has no benefit for a runner.

Slowly lowering the arms towards the feet (no need to touch), then slowly taking yourself back to a standing position, then repeating again a few times – now that’s stimulating for the body.

Try it whilst standing on one leg or with your eyes closed – that’s skill and adaption.

As Christopher McDougall told us in his latest podcast interview, your movements should be like life – all about the journey, not just the destination!

Standing All Day May Not Be The Answer

Headlines like ‘sitting is the new smoking’ are shock tactics to sell papers.

As runners, being the passionate people we are, it may be tempting to decide to stand all day at work instead.

‘Stand up desks’ have become increasingly popular thanks to media scaremongary.

Unfortunately, though some runners may find them to be the answer to all problems, standing all day long is in reality just another way of not moving enough, and brings with it its own series of potential health problems, in particular the extra effort placed on the circulatory system.

Studies suggest that the best choice for most people is to sit down at work but take regular activity breaks.

Sitting For Runners: Not What We Expected

This article has hopefully steered many of you away from what you expected to read given the title.

For most runners, the problem with sitting down for extended periods of time is not ending up with short hip flexors.

Instead, it’s the fact that regardless of the amount of running you do outside of work, the potential health risks of sitting down for long, uninterrupted periods of time can still affect you, and will not necessarily be counterbalanced by the miles you clock up outside of work.

Your body is a fantastically robust piece of kit, constantly adapting to daily demand.

However, this tremendous resilience is fuelled by movement and more specifically adaptive reaction to stimuli.

Just like you cannot outrun a bad diet, no matter how many miles you run.

Take away the movement for an extended period of time and you could elevate the risk of health issues such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

If you are runner who spends eight or more hours a day seated, read through the tips above and find a way to beat the habit!

Happy Running!