How to Work Out After a Long Day at the Office?

Five years ago, I made the transition from working as a full time personal trainer to spending more of my day sitting (or standing) in front of my computer researching, writing, podcasting, and doing online fitness and nutrition consulting.

Over time, I realized that there’s a big, big difference between being active on your feet all day, sitting in front a computer.

Even for a guy like me who’s really into fitness, it can still be hard to work out after a long day at the office. I bet you’ve experienced this too. So in this episode, you’ll learn exactly what to do to keep your body from feeling too drained to exercise after a day of work.

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Why Working Out at the End of a Workday Is Hard

When it comes to the way you feel at the end of the day, there is a stark contrast between:

A) being in the open air doing boot camps and receiving constant metabolic stimulation of personal training sessions

and

B) sitting at a coffee shop or home office with your butt planted in a chair all day as you’re bombarded by electrical waves from your computer and router. 

The good news is that you’re about to find out what I had to learn the hard way through back pain, shoulder tension, lack of sleep, headaches, and burnout. Here are the 5 ways that a long day at the office could be destroying your body, along with some quick and dirty tips on what you can do about it:

Tip #1: Electromagnetic Fields (EMF)

No, I’m not a hippie with a cabin in the woods where I sit wearing a tin-foil aluminum hat all day long. I’m a regular guy who likes to protect his body and stay on the cutting-edge of health and longevity.

And the fact is that electrical pollution from your smartphone, your WiFi router, your computer, and everybody else’s WiFi signals is kind of a big deal when it comes to your brain and cellular health. It’s why if you look at the teeny tiny warning label that came with your smartphone, it tells you not to bring the thing near your head.

So what can you do about it? Here are 3 things I do:

A) avoid WiFi and plug into the modem whenever possible

B) keep my phone in airplane mode whenever possible

C) use a special phone headset called an air tube headset

Tip #2: Shallow Breathing

Stop reading for just a second and answer this question: Are you breathing deep from your belly with your mouth closed or are you breathing through your mouth with your chest rising up and down?

You basically suffocate your body and shrivel your core muscles if you don’t learn how to breathe the right way.

If you’re like a great majority of the population, it’s the latter. That’s shallow breathing – and trust me – it’s super easy to fall into a shallow breathing rut when you’re working on your computer. I don’t know why. It just is.

But if you’re not breathing deeply, then this can create huge problems, since deep breathing patterns are how your body maintains a high metabolism, delivers oxygen to vital tissues, activates your abs, and keeps your blood pH from increasing. So you basically suffocate your body and shrivel your core muscles if you don’t learn how to breathe the right way.

What can you do about this? Simple: Check out my episode How to Breathe the Right Way and learn how to breathe optimally. I personally start off every day with 5 minutes of deep breathing just to set the standard for the rest of the day. If you want even more breathing help, then learn yoga. You’ll never breathe the same way again.

Tip #3: Poor Posture

Whether you sit all day or you have one of these new-fangled standing workstations, poor posture is the best way to ruin your low back and hips (and, déjà vu, also stop yourself from breathing properly).

This one really isn’t that hard to fix: Squeeze your butt and pull your shoulders blades back. Do it. Lots. Until it becomes automatic. Voila – I just saved you hours of staring at proper posture websites. If you do indeed want to study posture even more, then I’d highly recommend you review my episode 7 Ways to Burn Calories by Standing More.

Tip #4: Defensive Position

I’m not talking about football or basketball here. I’m talking about the defensive position you’re in when you spend the day hunched over a computer. The defensive position is technically a fetal position. Yes, a thumb-sucking, curled-up-under-your-bed, crying-like-a-baby fetal position.

It’s not your fault. It’s just that your body’s natural protective stance to guard your vital organs is to curl the neck, roll the shoulders forward, and hunch over – exactly what you do when you’re constantly staring at your computer. And the problem is that when you do this, you also do things like churn out stress-releasing cortisol hormone and every tiny muscle in your body gets all tight and knotted up.

So either A) get that standing workstation I mention earlier and use good posture with it; B) address your posture in the way that I discussed in tip #3; or C) fix the ergonomics of your work station. For a more scientific resource, check out The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), which was founded in 1957 with the mission to promote the discovery and exchange of knowledge concerning how human beings can interact more naturally with systems and devices of all kinds.

Tip #5: iPad Insomnia

Yes, I’ll admit that “iPad Insomnia” is not a highly technical medical term. Seriously though, this topic has actually been researched. When you use an iPad, a computer, an e-reader, a TV, or any other eyeball-straining screen, you decrease your natural melatonin production by over 20%. And melatonin is the stuff you need to sleep. But that’s not all. Reduced melatonin production has been associated with various physical ailments like diabetes, obesity, and depression.

Check out the article Can’t Sleep? Blame the Tablet for more on this phenomenon.

I personally use a free app called f.lux on my desktop and laptop and wear special “blue-light blocking” glasses when viewing a screen in the evening. Yeah, that’s kind of nerdy – quit laughing – but I sleep like a baby. 

That’s it. Once you’ve implemented these quick and dirty tips into your daily routine, you’ll find that you can finish a long day of work and still feel like working out – or get a very good night of sleep so that you can actually exercise the next morning without being too groggy to pull off even one push-up.

Remember – it doesn’t matter how much money you make at your job if you’re gaining weight, experiencing constant migraines, and wondering if you’ll live long enough to play with your grandkids at this rate.

If you have more questions about ways to get in a workout after a long day at the office, then join the conversation at Facebook.com/GetFitGuy!

Go outside and satellite dish images courtesy of Shutterstock.