Built to Move: The Sunday Times Bestseller

3. Long Sitting With your butt on the ground, sit with your legs straight in front of you. Try to sit with your back straight or with your torso leaning slightly forward.

What Your Results Mean Start by giving yourself a score of 10, then subtract one point for each of the following assists or problems: Bracing yourself with a hand on the wall or other solid surface Placing a hand on the ground Touching your knee to the floor Supporting yourself on the side of your legs Losing your balance

But when you sit on a chair in the traditional right-angle fashion—and do so for the freakish amount of time that many of our lives demand—the femurs just end up resting in one position, and it’s a position that isn’t great for fostering stability. What happens without that support? Your body solves the problem another way, usually by enlisting the

But a strategy that everyone can use is to look at your day and ask yourself, “What hours are within my control?” For most people, it’s the hours on either side of 9 to 5 (give or take an hour or two for you overachievers), plus maybe some time during lunch.

In a joint study ultimately published in a 2014 issue of the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, the researchers gave the Sit-and-Rise Test—the same one we previewed in the introduction to this book and which we’re now going to ask you to take again—to 2,002 men and women, ages fifty-one to eighty. Then the scientists went about their busine

Mostly what you need to know now is that you can get by with doing about ten minutes of mobilizations every day. All the better if you can devote more time, but everyone has ten minutes, so no excuses.

2. 90/90 Sitting With your butt on the ground, sit with one leg at a 90-degree angle in front of you (your thigh will be straight out from your hip). Slightly resting on the front leg’s side of your butt, bend the other leg at a 90-degree angle so that its foot is behind you. After five minutes (or however long is comfortable) in this position, switch

In an area free of debris, stand with one foot crossed in front of the other. Without holding on to anything (unless you feel very unsteady), bend your knees and lower yourself to the floor until you’re sitting in a cross-legged position. Now, from the same cross-legged position, lean forward with your hands outstretched in front of you for balance

Seated Hamstring Mobilization This action will help restore the sliding surfaces of the muscles and other tissues that lose function from too much sitting.