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Champion Insights – Maintaining Strategies to Sit Less and Move More

BeUpstanding Stories

One of the core goals of BeUpstanding is to assist workplaces to create a culture where sitting less and moving more is the norm. This means not only looking at individual changes that desk-based workers can make but also helping workplaces to make sustainable changes to the work environment, policy and culture. In order to find out how workplace champions and their teams have gone with maintaining the original strategies they chose during the program to sit less and move more, champions that are taking part in the BeUpstanding trial are asked to complete a maintenance workplace audit 12 months after commencing the BeUpstanding program.  At this time they are also contacted by the BeUpstanding team via phone to discuss how their team and workplace have gone with maintaining their strategies. This article looks at some of the feedback from champions who have completed this 12-month phone call and maintenance workplace audit questionnaire and describes the types of strategies champions reported to have been successfully maintained in their workplaces. It also explores some of the supporting factors to maintaining changes to move more in the workplace and some of the common challenges champions experienced. To date, we have had 36…

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What does and doesn’t work in gamification?

Latest evidence

A few weeks ago, this blog discussed how gamification might be used to support workers to sit less and move more. In this blog, Duncan Robertson reports on the second part of his literature review, which examined common features that worked and didn’t work for gamification, as well as some key considerations used to change behaviour using this approach. What works Social contact & social contracts: Referring back to the first of the three key psychological principals discussed in my previous blog, there are several social methods used in interventions that work well. For example, peer support between participants helps everyone reach their goal. Additionally, accountability between participants goes back to individuals being more motivated by loses than gains. Clearly defined goals: Interventions must provide participants with a purpose for participating. Clearly deciding on a reachable goal helps maintain motivation and engagement. An intervention that has been designed well can regularly adapt goals based on participant progress. For example, ensuring goal difficulty increases with participants progress in order to always provide a challenging activity. Friendly competition: Friendly competition between participants is encouraged. This can come in the form of leaderboards or a points system that everyone can see or is…

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Virtual Workouts You Can Do From Home

Key resources

With social distancing regulations in place and gyms forced to close you are likely finding yourself adjusting to life indoors. But just because you may not be able to do your usual forms of exercise, it doesn’t mean you should stop altogether. Exercise not only has multiple benefits to your physical health but it is also a great stress- reliever. Continuing to maintain some sort of a routine is so important in times likes these where we can feel more stress than usual. We’ve put together a selection of online exercise platforms with on demand fitness content who provide free access to workouts you can do at home that cover a whole range of exercise styles.  You can access the content via a smartphone app, YouTube or live streams on social media and you don’t necessarily need any equipment. All you need to do is find a space and get started. The best thing is no one is watching! Just as you schedule your diary to organise your workload and meetings, you should find time to exercise. Treat exercise with the same priority as a phone call with a client. Blocking out time away from your desk means that you…

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3 Tips from a Health Coach to Staying Active and Healthy when Working From Home

Bite size facts

One of the biggest problems from working at home can be inactivity. There’s no walking to get a cup of coffee, visiting a nearby colleague, taking the stairs to the bathroom or those incidental types of activity that come from being in a workplace with people and areas spread out. Everything is within easy reach at home. Couple that with a busy workload and this can mean sitting for as long as possible until the task is done. Suddenly hours have gone by and we’re still sitting hunched over the desk. Remaining in one posture for hours at a time can affect the muscles in your back, neck, hip flexors, hamstrings and calves. Excessive sitting can affect your metabolism, increase blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Staying active when working from home may seem easy. Without the daily commute and perhaps having more flexibility in your working hours, surely being at home affords you more time to spend on exercise? Whilst this may be true in theory, we may quickly fall into routines that do not prioritise healthy activity and the boundaries between work and personal life become blurred. The best…

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How You Can Sit Less and Move More When Working From Home

Bite size facts

These days many workplaces have flexible working arrangements that enable staff to work from home (telecommute) one or more days a week. Telecommuting can reduce business expenses significantly and increase employee satisfaction and productivity. The advantages for staff working from home are many: You can wear comfy clothes A custom environment with as little or as much noise as you like It’s easier to make calls No office distractions Zero commuting Save money However, even when you are working from home, the majority of your time is likely to still be spent sitting at a desk or table. Our main reaction to a busy workload is to sit for as long as possible until the task is done. Before you know it, hours have gone by and you have not moved from your chair. Excessive sitting can affect your metabolism, including your blood sugars and fats, putting you at increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Remaining in one posture for hours at a time can also affect the muscles in your back, neck, hip flexors, hamstrings and calves. Here are some tips to sitting less and moving more on your telecommuting days: Take regular breaks during your day to…

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Surprising Data on the Cost of Sitting in the UK

The Evidence

Get Britain Standing’s page on costs of prolonged sitting for the employer has some surprising facts. The page breaks these down into three categories absenteeism, presenteeism, and costs to engagement and wellbeing. What is presenteeism you may ask? I’m sure we’ve all felt it before. I can recall showing up to work feeling “out of it.” Even when employees are present the tolls of prolonged sitting can impact the quality and quantity of work. Absenteeism is easier to quantify. Average sized employers (250 persons) loose an estimated 4800 GBP/week due to absences with all businesses forgoing a total of 15 billion GBP annually. Of this 1/3rd (5 billion GBP) is due to low back pain, an ailment directly related to sedentary behaviour. The financial boon of wellness programs in part accounts for their eager adoption overseas and here in Australia. Trades Union Congress (TUC) of Britain estimates that wellness programs can reduce absences by as much as 42%. Reorienting the workplace to support dynamic movement with sit-stand desks, walking meetings, and active breaks may seem daunting to employers but resources like Get Britain Standing and Australia’s own BeUpstanding have the tools to get your workplace started. This article was written…

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Get the Commonwealth Standing

News and Events

I was perusing the British movement blog Get Britain Standing when I came across their solutions page. Get Britain Standing is a resource for employers much like Australia’s BeUpstanding, which focuses on a healthier Britain by reducing the prolonged hours of sitting that accompany many jobs. Their upcoming nationwide event On Your Feet Britain is set for April 24th 2020 with a reported ~2 million office workers participating. Get Britain Standing accounts that Briton’s working hours contribute ~70% of the daily sedentary health burden. Dr. Stuart Biddle, a professor of Active Living and Public Health is quoted on their website acknowledging the growing body of evidence that to be healthy we must move dynamically throughout the day. Which leads me to what excited me about their Solutions page: the balance board section! The benefit being, as long as you don’t fall off, strengthening your balance and your core muscles at your standing desk. They come in a variety of styles from the simple sea-saw, the log roll, and even the expert level half dome or as I like to call it the danger dome! (see image) Maybe don’t tell HR about the nickname when you bring one to the office.…

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The Goldilocks Zone for Movement

Latest evidence

It takes no large leap of the imagination to see that the human body was not shaped for a life in an office chair, car, or couch. Our ancestors were habitual movers constantly engaging in mild to moderate exercise. That is all well and good you may say, but as westerners with lives dominated by sedentary behaviour exercise must be supplemented back into our lives.  A recent meta-analysis on movement lays out guidelines for a “Goldilocks” zone of exercise for maximal health benefits. This approach bestows maximal benefit with as little as 50 minutes per week (equivalent to running just 5-6 miles). The study emphasised diminishing returns from daily high aerobic exercise in favour of more frequent low to moderate exercise such as walking or yoga. The study references of cohort of daily endurance athletes over the age of 45 who were measured to have an increased risk for cardiovascular events as compared to those with a more moderate activity profile. Key Take Aways: Sitting should be limited to 30 minutes at a time punctuated by a “brisk” 5 minute walk Use a sit-standing desk when possible to alternate postures regularly There is no upper limit for mild to moderate…

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Do move a muscle

The Evidence

It is hard to imagine too many situations in the office where you would need to freeze and not move a muscle. Hence – our week 4 poster invites BeUpstanding participants to “do move a muscle”, and to do so regularly throughout the day. But what are the benefits of doing this? When we are seated, our large postural muscles in our legs do not have to work very hard. However, just by standing up, muscle activation can increase substantially. For example, one study in 84 middle aged volunteers from Finland were asked to wear special shorts that measured the electromyographic (EMG) or muscle activity of their quadriceps and hamstrings. They were asked to do a number of activities (lying down, standing, sitting, squatting, stair climbing, walking, running) as well as a maximal isometric voluntary contraction (MVC) – a standard test for measuring muscle strength. The EMG activity of each of the tasks was then compared to what the participant achieved during the MVC. When sitting, participants thigh muscles were only activated at about 1% of their maximum. This increased to 2.5% just by standing, about 10-12% by walking, and a substantial 22-25% by squatting or climbing up stairs. In…

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Sitting can slow your stomach – Part 1

The Evidence

Have you ever experienced stomach pains, discomfort, or indigestion after sitting too long at your desk? While exercise has long been anecdotally thought to influence digestion, more recent research has been exploring the impact of physical inactivity on digestion. This post will explore some ways exercise and inactivity influences your gut, as well as the implications for your health. But first, what does it mean to say that sitting “slows your stomach?” One way to consider it would be gastric emptying, or the movement of stomach contents into the small intestine (how quickly food leaves the stomach). Another possibility is gastrointestinal transit time, which is the time it takes something you eat to move from your mouth through your entire gastrointestinal tract. Both these definitions have been linked to physical activity and inactivity, as have health outcomes such as constipation and colorectal cancer. How physical inactivity slows your stomach: When you aren’t moving, your gut isn’t moving much either. An extreme example can be seen in people who are confined to bed or held immobile. Hospital inpatients are another population at risk of prolonged physical inactivity, and increased rates of constipation are seen in this population. However it can be…

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