Most of have jobs that require us to sit most of the day. And again, by our bodies having to accommodate the job market of the day…we have unwittingly and/or unwillingly not allowed our bodies the treatment that they need and deserve. Remember that God is NOT the author or defined of “progress” - man is. I’m not all the way certain that the adage “Work smart, not hard” is, in fact…always smart…not if you take into consideration the cost of medical bills, time off work, and the ultimate possibility of leaving this world much earlier than need be.
Many possess the Apple Watches that nudge us to get up and MOVE…all to be ignored much of the time. Some of us go to the gym either before or after work assuming that it is neutralizing the damage of sitting for eight-plus hours…it doesn’t!
In order to really reverse this problem, all employers need to embrace some change and expect the payback to be long term and “down the road.” Here is an “over the top” example of an employer who was way ahead of his time and totally grasped the concept of exercise and “work-health” balance!
E.W. Maryland, the founder of Conoco Oil Company was the epitome of the responsible and caring employer. He started the business in the early 20th century (prior to The Great Depression), but he knew that the mental condition of the employee was as important as their physical condition. Every Conoco employee, whether a refinery worker or a white color office worker had equal access to membership to the CEA (Conoco Employees Association). Maryland created on the grounds (Ponca City, OK) of his empire a humongous gymnasium that housed basketball courts, badminton, ping pong tables and an attached Olympic-sized indoor pool with stairs ascending to a sundeck that circled around the pool…only high up above the pool. There were interdepartmental ping pong, badminton, basketball and pool tournaments. There were all kinds of lessons in the above sports available for the employees, wives and children.
Understandably, average employers cannot rise to this level of provision, but the answer must lie somewhere in the middle of “nothing and over the top!” Columbia University Medical Center did an in-depth study on the minimum “offset” to sitting at a desk every day for eight or more hours and they came up with a relatively simple solution of a gentle walking (treadmill set at 2 mph) for each hour of sitting. Again, in a controlled experiment this is easy to accomplish, but in a real world with old and new deadlines converging multiple times daily, how do we do this, faithfully?
Through NPR, an experiment was done with 20,000 listeners just to see the results of doing the movement breaks, religiously and this is the consensus from those participants:
1) Movement breaks improved mental health, too. It also lessened negative mentality. Participants were more energetic listing a 25% reduction in fatigue.
2) Breaks did not hurt job performance and actually enhanced it!
3) Frequent breaks are unrealistic because of deadline pressures, being ridiculed and disparaged about an eroding work ethic; 70-80% of the participants reported doing a break each hour or two. This ratio does not work for our health maintenance so it is imperative that we get 200% cooperation from our employers to change the landscape from killing ourselves prematurely to a win win scenario of work-health balance.
We shouldn’t have to sacrifice our all around mental and physical status quo just to not upset the societal sitting work ethic “apple cart” considered the “norm.” We all are, ultimately, responsible for our mental and physical health maintenance!
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