6 Quick Fixes For the Corporate Athlete

As a Corporate Athlete not only do you need an Athlete’s Mindset you need to up your entire game. Yes, internal conditioning is needed to be successful. However, the body that actuates that mindset needs to be equally up to the task for prolonged maximal success. One of the biggest factors is knowing your environment and what is does to you and what it can do for you.

Know The Risk Factors

Physical Demands of the Work:

• Desk Work – the biggest issue here is the prolonged static positions and bad postures. You knew it: your desk is killing you, making you sick, and fat.
• Bending and Lifting – bad movement patterns for doing the task and being unprepared
• Travel – static positions and awkward positions like in an airplane seat or hotel bed.

 

Workplace Layout and Condition:

• Ergonomics – a ton of money is spent on making the office biomechanicaly neutral, but, how you plug-in to your highly tuned office environment is just as important.

 

Objects You Work With:

• Mice and laptop touchpads – Require small exact movements and encourage hovering and bad posture.

 

Environmental:

• Temperature to air quality – living eight or more hours inside a hermetically sealed ant farm is just not healthy.
  

 

Know the Fix

Fix 1 – The Desk

• Simple fix: get up 1-2x/hr and do some simple drills and get a glass of water. Get the blood flowing to those chronically static muscles by stretching and moving to break the cumulative injury cycle. Sit to Stand desks are all the rage and can be extremely beneficial, but you have to do it smart. Check out these basic guidelines to making a dynamic standing environment.

Fix 2 – Bending and Lifting

• It would not be a problem except that your out of shape and not prepared. So, try a microbreak workout throughout your work day. Staying mobile and making those movements a regular part of your day will leave you always prepared.

Fix 3 – Travel

• Flying: Come prepared: bring an inflatable neck pillow or lumbar support for the plane.
  • A Better Travel Pillow – NPR Innovation Report
  • Brookstone’s adult toy store (get your mind out of the gutter!)
• Driving: Don’t be cheap. Rent/buy a car that feels good.
• Hotels: Ask for an orthopedic bed and bring your own pillow. 

Fix 4 – Ergonomics Fix

• Do whatever it takes to make it fit right! If the office won’t buy it, find books to prop up monitors or raise your feet to the correct level. Get yourself your own detached keyboard and mouse and label it, “Mine! Get your own!”
  • 
  • NOTE: To make the investment work, though, you need to work on posture. But we will discuss that in future posts.

Fix 5 – Kill the mouse

• I have been getting workers to switch over to touch/track pads like one from:

   The employees I work with love these devises and swear their more productive too!

Fix 6 – Temp and Air Quality

• Become a Boy Scout and come to work prepared. Offices can have a wide variety of microclimates in them. So, you have to come prepared. Fashion is important, but being comfortable and functional will encourage healthier habits like moving.
• You can even create your own air space. 

Bottom Line… Don’t let your environment do you in… Master it!

Start with simple solutions like moving more, taking micro-breaks, traveling in comfort, improving ergonomics, changing your mouse, and improving your climate.

Don’t miss future articles – subscribe. Watch for our fixes for the Industrial Athlete in two weeks.

Images and Additional Resources

• Environment by Enokson
• Office Ergonomics