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Simple activities to be active at your desk – Part 3

Bite size facts

Desk-based workers can spend a lot of time at their desk sitting. If you are a regular follow of this blog, you will know that high levels of sitting time can have several detrimental impacts on health and wellbeing, including on cognitive function, risk of diabetes, physical function and quality of life. Prolonged sitting – that is, sitting for a long time without taking a break – is emerging as particularly harmful, which is why we promote regular breaks from sitting at BeUpstanding. Indeed, a 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis by Loh and colleagues highlighted the beneficial effects of having regular physical activity breaks on blood sugar, insulin, and triacylglycerol measures. Their article concluded that taking short breaks from prolonged sitting results in better glycemic control and improved metabolic control compared to individuals who do not incorporate short physical activity breaks. One impact of too much sitting for too long is on our musculoskeletal health. Here, prolonged sitting can cause tight hip flexors and leg muscles. Vanroelen (2022) states that these imbalances are due to the shortened and lengthened muscles in your legs due to muscle weakness and tightness. These imbalances can lead to a compensatory hyperlordosis or excessive inward…

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What did champions like about the BeUpstanding program?

BeUpstanding Stories

Upon completing the 8-week implementation phase of BeUpstanding, champions are asked to fill out a program completion survey via the BeUpstanding toolkit. The survey asks various questions about what strategies they did as a team, facilitators and barriers to implementing the strategies, as well as their experience as a champion in delivering the program. As part of our evaluation of BeUpstanding, we are looking at what worked well in the program and what aspects of the program workplace champions liked. This articles summarises champion responses to the question “What did you like about the BeUpstanding Program?” The easy to follow and simple structure of the program, along with the resources and information provided in the toolkit were key aspects of the program champions enjoyed, as highlighted by the following champion responses: “Ease of implementation, no cost, good resources. Ability to implement from home and in our purpose-designed office space.” “Easy to follow, well structured. Posters were great and the toolkit was well thought out and put together.” “Easy to implement and tailor to suit the work environment & people’s abilities.” “Resources that were engaging and easy to access and use” “Clear, structured weekly guide about what to do.” Another feature…

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Simple activities to be active at your desk – Part 2

Bite size facts

Guidelines recommend regular breaks from prolonged sitting, and at team BeUpstanding, we encourage breaks at least every 30 minutes. Here are some activities that you can do at your desk to help combat some of the impacts of prolonged sitting. Individuals who sit for a prolonged amount of time tend to have rounded shoulders, tight neck muscles, and have back pain and this is known as upper-crossed syndrome. Balciuniene et al. discuss that there is an imbalance with your upper body muscles like your upper trapezius, levator scapula, and pectoralis major and minor, since these dorsal and ventral muscles cross, which create a pattern of joint dysfunction leading to spinal stress and poor posture. These features of having a forward head posture and thoracic kyphosis, excessive upper back curvature, to name a few, leads to poor shoulder stability and mobility, especially at the glenohumoral joint in your shoulder. This causes an overactivation of some muscles like your levator scapulae and upper trapezius to try to maintain body alignment. Kim et al. (2016) determined that postural pain syndrome can be a result from upper-crossed syndrome and poor posture due to prolonged sitting. Lee et al. (2017) discussed that incorporating exercises using…

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Simple activities to be active at your desk – Part 1

Bite size facts

Guidelines recommend regular breaks from prolonged sitting, and at team BeUpstanding, we encourage breaks at least every 30 minutes. Here are three activities that you can do at your desk to help combat some of the impacts of prolonged sitting. Wall Sit with Calf Raise We all sit hunched over in our chairs whenever we work on a project or browse on our computer. Sometimes people tend to hunch over when eating food at a table. If you have ever seen anyone walking around with a curved lower back, or excessive lumbar lordosis, their posture may have been severely impacted from sitting hunched over at a desk all day. Wall sits help improve your posture and improve your lower body muscle endurance, while strengthening your muscles. Here are the steps to executing a wall sit with a calf raise. Place your back against the wall Squat down until your legs are at 90 degrees Raise up your toes and lower your heels back down to perform one repetition Add a weight on your legs for an extra challenge Performing this exercise allows the body to engage the abdominal muscles as you brace your core in order to keep your back…

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Using gamification to help workers sit less and move more

Latest evidence

Here at team BeUpstanding we are always looking for new ways to support workers to sit less and move more. You may have already read some previous blogs on this subject, like this article on mobile apps. In this next part of the blog series, Duncan Robertson, a final year UQ Bachelor of Health Science student, explores how gamification may be used to support behaviour change in the workplace. Read about his findings below. Diving into the literature To build a greater understanding of how gamification in the workplace works I took a deep dive into the literature. From thousands of results, 42 pieces of literature with value were found across nine databases, ranging from peer reviewed academic papers to grey literature, such as blog articles and opinion pieces. These were categorised into a table and colour coded based on the usefulness of each paper with green being most useful, yellow as average, red as not so much and grey aptly being used to designate any grey literature included. The search mainly focused on the term’s ‘gamification’, ‘workplace’ and ‘physical activity’. Several variations of aforementioned search terms were used to find specific points of data including ‘sedentary behaviour’ ‘usefulness’, ‘effectiveness’,…

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The impact of COVID-19 on BeUpstanding Champions: a snapshot survey

BeUpstanding Stories

COVID-19 has changed the way we live, connect and work. During these unprecedented times, significant changes within the workplace have been taken to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and ensure the health and safety of our communities. Here at team BeUpstanding we recognise that changes in the workplace and business operations presents new opportunities and challenges for BeUpstanding Champions and their teams. To understand this further, and to inform how the BeUpstanding program could be adapted to meet current and future needs that reflect the changing working environment, we conducted a quick snapshot survey with champions and teams taking part in the BeUpstanding implementation trial. The survey was sent in May 2020 when the COVID-19 situation was still rapidly changing in the Australian context. UQ Master of Public Health student, Sidara Engelhardt, has been conducting a deep dive into the findings from the snapshot survey sent to the champions – check out his summary of the findings below. Our participants The survey was sent to 65 champions with 27 completing the survey. Participating champions were predominantly from Queensland (48%) and New South Wales (33%) with representation also from Victoria (4%), Western Australia (8%) and South Australia (7%). Responding champions had…

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New video resources available on creating healthy and safe computer work

Key resources

The Queensland Government has released a series of fantastic resources on creating healthy and safe computer work. There are six videos in the series, including: selecting and adjusting your chair, setting up your workstation, visual comfort for computer work, working from home, mobile computer work, and the video we are featuring today – how to stay active while working on the computer. Keep an eye out to see the link to BeUpstanding! All of the resources can be found here. Working on computers often involves long periods of being sedentary at your desk. When your work requires such little movement, plan movement into your day to reduce the risk of pain and chronic diseases. Exercising before or after work doesn’t protect you from these health risks if you spend most of your day sitting. Tips to get moving when you’re working on computers Position your printer, scanner, photocopier and rubbish bin away from your desk so you need to walk to them. Use your sit/stand desk to change position regularly throughout the day. Use a Bluetooth/wireless headset to allow you to stand and move during phone or video calls. Vary your work tasks so that you change your postures and…

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Need a prompt to get up? We road tested some break apps for your computer and phone

The Evidence

So imagine this scenario: piping hot coffee on your desk, paperwork and pens strewn across your table, you sit in your swivel office chair and your hands eagerly move towards your keyboard. All of a sudden, your coffee has turned cold, fearful symptoms of repetitive strain injury start to show, four hours have passed and you realized you have not moved an inch away from your workstation. I assume there are some head nodding and sighs of agreement as you recall the last time this happened to you. It is easy to forget the amount of time you spend using your electronics, especially when you are knee deep in your work. Prolonged sitting for hours on end can lead to detrimental health risks like cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, as well as decreases in productivity and overall mood. However, if you are aware of the risks, and want to get up regularly, it can be easy to forget. Fortunately, there are many solutions available that can give that gentle nudge or prompt to change posture and ensure you move more when you work. For me personally, I have never relied on apps to keep myself accountable and struggle with…

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Tips from Champions for running a health and wellbeing program with a remote working team

BeUpstanding Stories

With staff moving to working more from home as a result of COVID-19, this can present additional challenges to running health and well-being programs within a workplace. We have had many workplaces contact us to ask whether they can still implement BeUpstanding if staff are not located in the office or onsite and the good news is YES! BeUpstanding is designed to be able to be implemented with your staff no matter where they are working from and we have had many BeUpstanding champions who have successfully taken part in the program during the last few months whilst dealing with changes to staff working locations. Two of these champions share their experience below with running the program in their workplace before and during COVID-19 imposed changes, and provide insights and tips for how they were successfully able to engage staff in the program and encourage them to sit less and move more while “at” work. Our two Champions are Sabrina from CheckUp in Brisbane and Matthew from Breakthru in Sydney. How did COVID-19 affect your workplace?  Sabrina: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, all CheckUP staff began working remotely from home throughout the course of the pandemic. In terms of…

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The importance of social support during isolation

The Evidence

Social support involves having a network of friends, family and peers that you can turn to in times of need. Psychologists and other mental health professionals often talk about the importance of having a strong social support network. Why is having social support particularly relevant during social isolation? In the time of COVID-19 pandemic, you may have felt more irritated, lonely, or more easily affected by stressful situations. These experiences may be a trigger to reach out and connect with others. While some people have taken the lockdown time as a chance to reengage with hobbies, or home or garden projects, others may be busier than ever due to the changes induced by the lockdown. Regardless of whether you are enjoying some more free time, or adding another ball or two to your day-to-day juggle, feelings of loneliness, anxiety and isolation can arise from social-distancing requirements. This is because of the distress people experience when their social relations are not the way they would like. Poor social support has been linked to depression and loneliness has been shown to increase the risk of depression, alcohol consumption, cardiovascular disease and other physical ailments. Research has also demonstrated the link between social relationships…

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