1/24 Myth Busting Monday

Michelle gets proper depth in her back squat. Can you get this low in your front squat today?

​Is Sitting the New Smoking?

Sitting is something we do A LOT! By some estimates we sit up to 10 hours a day. All of this sitting has impacted our health. In fact, some folks say sitting is the new smoking. 
According to Daniel Lieberman, an anthropologist who studies human fitness, there are 2 factors that make sitting a problem. The first is the time we spend too much time in uninterrupted sitting, Lieberman says:

"Just getting up every once in a while, every 10 minutes or so ”just to go to the bathroom or pet your dog or make yourself a cup of tea” even though you're not spending a lot of energy, you're turning on your muscles.

And your muscles, of course, are the largest organ in your body ”and just turning them on turns down inflammation. It uses up fats in your bloodstream and sugars in your bloodstream, and it produces molecules that turn down inflammation.

So the evidence is that interrupted sitting is really the best way to sit. In hunter-gatherer camps, people are getting up every few minutes, to take care of the fire or take care of a kid or something like that. And that kind of interrupted sitting, as well as not sitting in a chair that's kind of nestling your body and preventing you from using any muscles, all that kind of keeps your muscles going and turns out to be a much healthier way to sit."

Second, according to Lieberman, sitting in a chair, with a back, is a relatively new practice. Up until the last few hundred years when we sat it was on the floor, or on benches or stools. Chairs with back rests were used only by nobility and the rich. In many part of the world sitting on the floor is still common. When I lived in Japan I sat on the floor all the time. According to Lieberman

"The reason it matters for our health is that a seat back essentially makes sitting even more passive than just sitting on a bench or a stool because you lean against the seat back and you're using even fewer muscles, even less effort to stabilize your upper body.

And the result is that we end up having very weak backs. So there are a lot of muscles that we use in our backs to hold up our upper body, and those muscles, if we don't use them, just like every other muscle in your body, they atrophy. And weak muscles then make us more prone to back pain."

Sitting is a common practice in all societies that Lieberman has studied. You can reduce the deleterious impacts of all the sitting by getting up and moving around, spending some time standing, and sitting mostly on a bench or a stool. 
You can listen to the entire podcast below. 
Do you have a myth you want me to investigate? Tell me in the comments. â€‹

Click Here for The WOD