What Sitting All Day Does to Your Body (and What Pilates Does About It)

Written By Holly Swanson

The average American adult in 2015–16 sat on average, around 6.5 hours a day, and that number only continues to rise. If you work at a desk now, you’re likely well past that when you consider an 8 hour work day, plus a commute, plus the couch or chair in the evening.

Your body will adapt to whatever you’re asking of it, and when you’re sitting, you’re asking very little. Breaths are probably more shallow and few muscles are engaged. Pilates is an excellent way to move after you’ve been sitting because it asks entirely new things of your body like hip extension, spinal rotation, and full, deep breaths. 

We've been teaching Pilates in Chicago since 2002, and desk workers make up a large share of who we see at our Lakeview and Lincoln Park studios. With the rise of phones and tech, all of us probably need to hear this. 

Is sitting all day really that bad for you?

Long periods of sitting are associated with poorer health outcomes, especially when they’re paired with very little physical activity. The largest analysis on this question, published in The Lancet, pooled data from more than 1 million people. It found that sitting more than eight hours a day was linked to higher mortality risk among people with the lowest activity levels. In the most active group, who averaged around 60 to 75 minutes of moderate activity a day, researchers did not observe that higher risk associated with high sitting time.

We’ve all seen the headline “sitting is the new smoking,” but it isn’t a very helpful comparison. Physical activity can meaningfully reduce some of the health risk associated with sitting, but it doesn’t make long, unbroken sitting irrelevant. You can’t offset smoking with a workout, and you also don’t need to panic because you have a desk job. The useful question is what you do with the rest of your day.

What does sitting all day actually do to your body?

Mostly, it teaches your body to be good at sitting and not much else. A few specific things happen when the same shape gets held for hours at a time:

  • Your hips stay bent and your glutes stay lengthened. Sitting puts your hips in flexion and asks nothing of the muscles on the back side of your lower body. Over months and years, most people get comfortable in that shape and stiff outside of it. Standing up tall, extending a hip behind you: these start to feel like effort because your body rarely practices them. You might’ve heard the term “dead butt,” which references this lack of activation.

  • Your spine spends the day in one shape. Spines were built to move and rotate. A desk day offers one position, usually a rounded upper back with the head drifting toward the screen. Joseph Pilates himself said “If your spine is inflexibly stiff at 30, you are old; if it is completely flexible at 60, you are young”

  • The unbroken hours affect more than your muscles. In a randomized trial, adults who broke up sitting with a 5-minute easy walk every half hour blunted their post-meal blood sugar response compared to sitting straight through. It was a small study (11 adults), but it matches a consistent pattern in research: long unbroken blocks of sitting are worse than the same total hours with movement mixed in, and walking helps stabilize our blood sugar.

Does Pilates help with back pain from sitting?

Usually yes. We wrote an entire blog on Pilates and back pain, and the situations where it can help. Strain from sitting and “tech neck” are usually improved through movement, including Pilates.

What Pilates offers over a generic gym routine is precision and supervision: an instructor watching how you move, springs that support you, and a system built around the exact positions a desk day leaves out. 

What does Pilates train that will help my posture? 

Pain, stiffness, and tightness that is a result of sitting can be offset by controlled movements and exercise. Here’s some ways Pilates does that:

  • Hip extension and glute work. Footwork, bridging, and standing spring work all ask your hips to open and your glutes to activate and work. 

  • Spinal extension and rotation. Exercises like swan and the twist series move your spine in different positions that sitting doesn’t do.

  • Upper back strength. Rowing and chest expansion strengthen the muscles between your shoulder blades, which spend the workday lengthened and lightly loaded, doing their best to hold your head up.

  • Breathing. Slouched sitting compresses the space your ribs need to expand. Every Pilates exercise (especially at Core Chicago) is organized around full, structured breaths, which is part of why people leave a session feeling taller. Some of that is muscle work. Some of it is just breathing at full size for an hour.

How much Pilates do you need to counteract sitting?

Two to three sessions a week is the sweet spot for most people, the same answer we give for Pilates generally. But we won't pretend those hours undo everything, because the research above is clear that the unbroken sitting itself matters. The combination that works is a few structured sessions a week plus small free habits the rest of the time: stand up every 30 to 60 minutes, take one phone call walking, get off the train a stop early. Pilates gives your body the strength and range that make those movements available. The habits make sure you use them.

If you sit all day and you're brand new to this, start smaller than you think you need to. Two sessions a week for a month will probably be noticeable to you. 

Ready to spend an hour a week not sitting?

If you're leaning toward privates: our Privates Intro Package ($295) includes three one-on-one sessions to build your foundation and give you a feel for personalized instruction.

If you're leaning toward group classes: our Intro Week Membership ($110) gives you unlimited classes for your first week (one per day) so you can try different instructors, class types, and times at both our Lincoln Park and Lakeview locations. The Privates/Group Combo ($255) splits the difference with two privates and two group equipment classes.

Book at [/schedule], or reach us at info@corechicagopilates.com or 773-296-9660 (call or text).

Lincoln Park: 2549 N Racine Ave, Chicago, IL 60614 Lakeview: 3000 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago, IL 60657

Resources

Holly Swanson
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