Benefits of Standing Vs. Sitting

There was some discussion of this on the running.about.com boards a few weeks back, but not from the ITBS side, rather from a pure fitness viewpoint. It was an outgrowth of an NPR report on the impact of being sedentary on the body. The key point was that standing, you use your leg muscles continually at a low level, and this seems to have some positive impact on overall health. Regardless, if it seems to help, keep with it.

I thought you were talking about taking a dump.

I have noticed that I am taller in the standing position vs. the sitting position. This is directly correlated to the fact that my leg is oustretced vs. bent. Coincidence? I think not. I have also found that if I sit in a chair with wheels it is easier to move around than sitting in a chair without wheels.

funny...i'm in a conference call right now and i'm standing as i type. i think about this alot. at one point i sat on a physio ball all day but found that my hip flexors were tired by the end of the day. i decided that when running alot, a sitting job is good for recovery. but, i think sitting all day is bad,bad, bad.

i think the stand up desk is a great option but i think that splitting it up between sitting and standing would be the perfect solution.

There are some good benefits from a joint health perspective, and in my mind from an ITB scenario as well.

In sitting your hip flexors are shortened and your hip extensors are placed on length. Often we sit in a posterior pelvic tilt and a flexed lumbar spine, which is not an ideal position as over time the ligamentous support of the spine and SI joints begins to "creep" and lengthen and will never achieve a shortened length again.

Additionally, most do not have enough legitimate gluteal function as a result of the hip flexors having more tone and rarely using the gluteals. In standing we can eliminate the position causing reciprocal inhibition and get the gluteal complex more active.

This matters with ITB because the superficial sacral fibers of the glutes maximus extend into the ITB and are able to play some role in controlling it's translation.

Additionally, a lot of ITB issues are a result decreased transverse plane stability at the hip causing the femur to creep excessively into internal rotation causing the lateral portion of the inferior femur to contact the ITB and creat stress. Standing allows the muscles (including gluteus maximus) to work better and help in your pursuit of better mechanics.

Best regards,

Carson Boddicker

www.BoddickerPerformance.com

Thanks for the comments. I plan to stick with standing all day for now.

I was talking about this with a friend and his comment was "Do you think cavemen had chairs?" which is a pretty good point. Sitting all day in the upright position a chair puts you in probably isn't something the human body naturally evolved to do. Then you have all of the cultures where people always used to sit on the floor or on a pillow.

Mr. Hypothesis wrote:I was talking about this with a friend and his comment was "Do you think cavemen had chairs?" which is a pretty good point.

Barney Rubble wrote:

[quote]Of couse they had chairs but they also had cars they had to propel with their feet so they still got a good workout, even while driving.

Source? That doesn't sound peer reviewed to me.

you don't think they sat on logs or rocks when they found em?

Duuuuuuuuuuuuh wrote:

Barney Rubble wrote:

[quote]Of couse they had chairs but they also had cars they had to propel with their feet so they still got a good workout, even while driving.

Source? That doesn't sound peer reviewed to me.

If you want a source watch a few episodes of The Flintstones. All the proof you need is right there.