An office is a place you spend a lot of your day. If you have an 8 hour day, you’re like most working individuals. Sometimes though, as we all know, the day can go long. Early mornings and late evenings carry over into working a bit at home only to return to the office the next morning bright and early. If you work from home, it can be even harder to break away from the work to home balance. A few things help make your workspace feel less like a prison, and more like home. One of those ways is working out at the office, using your chair and desk.
Standingdesktopper's pick
Exercising at the Office
It’s crucial to stay active. Your body and mind both crave exercise. There’s not a single thing that your body benefits from by staying still, unless you’ve already worked out and you’re taking a rest, or you’re injured. Other than those two things, it’s likely that your body wants to be used. You need to be moving to keep everything in tip top shape, and it’s crucial to your mind as well. Your brain works better when it’s stimulated, and a good night’s sleep and some exercise go a long way. Let’s break down the physical and mental reasons desk and chair exercises are essential to your work performance.
Physical
The need for physical activity isn’t something runners made up. It’s an actual physiological need your body and bones crave in order to keep up with the day-to-day maintenance of your health. For your bones, it’s not just drinking milk that helps them stay strong. If they spend too much time dormant, or in other words, not moving, it’s likely that they’ll lose density. Low bone density is what comes into play when older men and women fall and easily break things like hips or arms. If you’re inactive for a majority of your day, it’s likely that you’ll start to see that your bones are less and less dense. You won’t actually see it with your eyes, but you’ll feel more pain when you do things like bump into a table or trip on a pair of shoes.
The desire to be physically active can be difficult to adopt. If you’re not a lifelong exercise fiend, it’s likely you’ll have to learn how to love being active. Think of a few ways you enjoy being active in your free time. Maybe hiking is something you’d enjoy with friends or family? Another easy option, of course, is taking a break from the busy, boring work day and doing a few exercises at your desk! We’ll focus on chair dips in this article, and those are some of the most physically beneficial for your bones and muscles. The mental factor in working out can also be a huge positive impact on your work day as well.
Mental
Look, getting yourself to run 3 miles every day might be an impossible task, but the mental benefits to being fit and active are numerous and far stretching. Likely, you won’t even want to make time after work to work out unless you’re motivated, and in that case, you have to work out in any opportunities you can find. A perfect way to break up a work day is a quick workout. Chair dips offer you the ability to work out your arms and legs, but it’s also an exercise that requires a lot of focus to do correctly. You can’t do a set of chair dips without being focused on your balance and strength, not to mention the actual workout. Staying mindful in ways that benefit your brain is a great way to train your brain to love exercise. It’s also a huge way to take a work day and make it more interesting. If you find yourself spacing out a lot during the day, take a break and do a set of chair dips. Your body and mind will thank you.
The Best Time to Schedule your Chair Dips
Let’s say you work the typical 9-5 work day. When is the best time to do chair dips at your desk? Well, first and foremost, it’s likely that you’ll need to make sure you know what your work schedule entails for the day. If you have meetings at 10 and 12, doing an exercise right before that might not be great because you might be short of breath or sweaty. It’s recommended you give yourself at least 15 minutes of cool down time after a workout. If you plan on stretching afterward as well, add another 10 minutes to that, for a total of 25 minutes. It’s helpful to have that time in case you need it to cool down or get changed back into some work attire.
Next, think about when you’re eating. You don’t want to work out directly after eating. You’ll feel sluggish with a full stomach and may experience stomach cramps. If you’re too hungry, it’s likely that you could harm yourself as well. If you’re not well-fueled, you might not have a workout that does much for you because you’re so ill-equipped to complete the exercises. Doing the exercises incorrectly is worse than not doing them at all; it can more likely cause injury than work out any of your muscles.
With all of that being said, give yourself some time after eating, maybe an hour, and go ahead and start your workout. Give yourself 25 minutes between the end of your workout and your next appointment or meeting, and you should have the perfect timing for your chair dips. Let’s talk now about how to actually do the chair dips.
How to do a Chair Dip
It’s crucial if you’re going to exercise these muscles, you know how to do a chair dip correctly. The steps are easy, and it’s simple to learn, but if you need to consult this guide, keep this article handy. A few things to think about before we begin are that you’ll need a chair that is sturdy and stable. If you have an older chair, do not force yourself to give it a try, even if there’s the slightest doubt that you will be able to safely dip in your chair without falling. There’s not a single workout worth hurting or harming yourself. Make sure as well that your office space is spacious enough to utilize the exercise to its fullest extent. You don’t want to short yourself and actually harm yourself in the act of the exercise. Your triceps and legs are important, but it’s crucial not to harm them. The last thing you’d want to do is cause harm instead of promoting wellness. There’s a number of steps in the chair dip process, and we’ll go through each one to make sure you know how to be safe working out at your desk in your office chair.
- First, position your hand’s shoulder width apart from one another and find a position in that stance that feels comfortable. You’ll want to be facing away from the chair for the dip; you cannot do a chair dip while facing the back of the chair.
- Sit on the chair softly as if you were going to take a seat, but simply rest your butt on the front of the chair’s seat with your legs extended outward. It’s important to make sure in this step that you chair isn’t going to roll away from you, so make sure everything you’re using, including your own body, is stable.
- Next, straighten your arms out, and keep about a 45-degree angle to your elbow bend and you’ll begin to lower yourself to the ground. You’ll feel a little tension in the triceps as you begin to lower, and that’s a good thing. Just remember: don’t ever continue to work out when you feel pain.
- Slowly begin to bend your elbows into a 90-degree angle and keep your back straight as you can to the bench. It’s important to keep your form steady and straight here, or else you may cause harm to a muscle you’re not supposed to be using. You should feel all the tension in the triceps and legs, nothing in your back should be hurting. If so, you’re doing it wrong.
- Once you’ve reached the bottom of your movement, press down into the bench and straighten back up, elongating your elbows and returning to the position in step 2. This means you have completed one chair dip. Again, this would have been a successful rep if you felt the tension in your triceps and legs.
- Continue to do this for a certain amount of reps and sets. Let’s talk for a bit about reps and sets.
What Reps and Sets Are Right for My Chair Dip Routine?
Finding the right balance of sets and reps is important to a good workout. First of all, what are sets and reps? A rep is one single workout motion. So, a rep of a chair dip would be one dip down and back up. A set is a collection of reps in a little group. So if you did 10 reps of chair dips, or 10 up and down dips on an office chair, that would be one set. You complete sets altogether, meaning you do 10 in a row, followed sometimes by a short break (10-15 seconds). You usually complete 3-4 sets of a single workout, meaning you would do 3-4 groups of a number of reps.
Your rep and set total depend on you. If you’re new to working out and don’t have a lot of strength, go with lower sets and reps. For newer workout individuals, it’s suggested you do 3 sets of 8 reps. If you’re more experienced, consider moving that total up to 4 sets of 12 reps. If you have friends that workout, or maybe family, consult them for their opinion. It’s likely that no matter what, you’ll be a little sore after working out. That’s okay. What we want to avoid is injury, so if you’re not very strong in your triceps, but you do 4 sets of 20 reps, you’ll likely do more harm than make progress.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to do a chair dip, the right amount to do, and what benefits you can expect, try to implement them into your work schedule. Make sure that your office is aware that you’re doing a few exercises; they might be confused and think you’re messing around. If coworkers are interested in what you’re doing, share this article with them! We spend a lot of time in our office, it can be nice to share a positive experience with your coworkers.
In an 8 hour work day, everyone is very busy. Sometimes, the day goes even longer than the typical schedule. It’s crucial to find ways to break up the day, and instead of getting takeout or taking up smoking or something else like that, do something that helps your heart and overall health. It can make work seem more fun to do things like little desk workouts. Especially considering the physical benefits of the chair dips, it’s a no-brainer that you should take 15 minutes to do them in the middle of the day to help your body and mind feel free from the desk and overall office confinement.
If you’re younger, it’s not always very evident that your health will become a concern at a later date. It’s best to be proactive, especially with your muscles and bones. If you are a little weak in muscle strength, that can be fixed over time with workouts like chair dips. Your body and mind will help you to become a better worker when you’re staying active and working on your physical and mental health. For now, work on a good goal for your chair dips, and start today. There’s no better time to start than the present.
