Standing desk delivers health benefitsFROM the canopy of printouts to the undergrowth of stuck-down reminders, this desk is a fragile ecosystem that not so much sustains life as consumes it.
If my body was ever a temple, it is now a crumbling ruin, slumped in an office chair behind two computer screens and a bubbling stream of news. In the open plan, pro forma, white and grey of the modern office environment, work inevitably involves hours and hours of sitting. That’s simply not good for your health.
For the first time, Australia’s physical activity guidelines include the risks of doing the exact opposite: remaining sedentary.
It’s not just failing to get your recommended 2½ to five hours of moderate-intensity activity each week — or 75 to 150 minutes of the really hard stuff. Sedentary behaviour carries its own health risks.
And that is why, one fateful day, and with the support of my similarly shackled podmates, I decided it was time to take a stand. It was time to stand for something — well, everything really. It was time to trial a standing desk.
DAY ONE
THE problem with such a finely balanced deskscape is that to introduce a new component requires careful thought. Everyone will have different requirements, whether it be your height, your space or the number of monitors you have. Having chosen a raw timber, two-tiered Bystander desk, with that glorious smell and feel of a carpenter’s workbench, blending into the environment was never going to be possible.
I decide the desk should face a glass wall so people don’t knock it flying. I reorganise my piles of paper. I dance with the phone and monitor cables. I chuckle, comparing this experience to Kramer’s “levels” in that Seinfeld episode. But something else is starting to concern me: people can see me up here: the bureau chief, other journos, advertising people, the IT guys with whom I never discussed this trial. I have no idea what I am doing but, as a man, I must now project a degree of industrious confidence. Thankfully they don’t notice that by midafternoon my feet are so sore I slip off my shoes.
DAY TWO
TODAY I have ditched my hard-heeled shoes in favour of work-issue bushfire boots and already it feels better. It’s a strange thing, standing. I don’t know what to do with my feet: sometimes I go all akimbo; sometimes I make a figure four; too often I wiggle my hips and thrust about, trying to find the right position.
I put my headphones on and someone suggests I look like a club DJ. This prompts me to reorganise the desk for the umpteenth time, again thinking about how I work, what I need, what I do and what people see.
It has been too easy for me to slump in my office chair, half-hidden, supposedly multi-tasking yet ignoring reminders to go for a walk, stretch or hit the gym.
Up here, bizarrely, I am working harder. With little more than my phone, iPad, notebook and PC, and in full view of the world, I tend to focus. Maybe that is because relaxing up here is almost impossible. (Can anyone sleep while standing?)
By the time the first full day is over, my knees, hamstrings, back and shoulders are sore.
DAY THREE
AFTER a busy morning at home, and surprisingly stiff for someone who did nothing the day before, I arrive at work to discover I still have a standing desk. Gah. This is also the day, of all days, that I split another pair of pants getting out of the car.
After checking myself out in the bathroom mirror — still overweight but not noticeably split — I resume my position. This desk makes me selfconscious but also self-aware: seems I am lifting my forearms to get a clean strike on the keyboard, which in turn shifts my shoulders back, while I also tilt my hips to alleviate pressure on my lower back. Sitting becomes the exception rather than the rule, the thing I do to take a break.
If I keep this up, I can see benefits for both productivity and posture. Unlike some who have trialled standing desks, I don’t predict rapid weight loss, though it may play a part in my longer-term plans.
And, hey, if some ink-stained heffalump in the gym asks whether I lift, at least now I can say, “Yeah bro, 95kg.” That’s 95kg, eight hours a day, five days a week.
MORE than a fortnight has passed since the Bystander came into my work life. This standing desk has been accepted by the herd — in fact, my podmates are now discussing when, not if, they too will rise up. Those few days of sore legs, crushed feet and a stiff back have passed — if there is pain now it generally means I’m doing something wrong, although a standing mat would make things easier. I feel tighter, taller, more aware of my posture, which in turn seems to make me more conscious of things such as diet, fluid intake and the need for exercise. For you, that’s obviously all anecdotal, so some experts have looked at the evidence and believe sitting can be deadly.
Emmanuel Stamatakis, from the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, says that for each hour of daily sitting you swap for an hour doing even light activity, your risk of death is reduced by up to 5 per cent. Swap it for walking or more intense activity and that reduction jumps to 12 per cent to 14 per cent.
“It is absolutely imperative to find ways to incorporate some sort of movement into the daily office routine, even if only of a light intensity,” Stamatakis says.
“I believe in 20 to 30 years we will look back and be horrified that we imposed so many hours of sitting on our workers, just so they can make a living.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/executi ... 7137568716