By Craille Maguire Gillies / Illustration by Rachel Ann Lindsay
Don’t think you can run from your desk to the printer and write it off as your daily hit of cardio. If you’re not a bodybuilder or marathon runner by trade, here are a few ways to stay fit on the job.
1 Stretch Your Potential
Nobody wants to be the person doing downward dog right behind the boss, but a little om does a workplace good. Many yoga and pilates studios offer custom in-office sessions. In Calgary, for example, MYoga takes its mats on the road. Meanwhile, for $75 an hour, Ronna Schneberger of Nature’s Tracks Eco & Yoga Adventures, in Canmore, holds corporate yoga classes to stretch out carpal tunnel kinks and computer-induced backaches. Chances are, your favourite local studio offers a similar service or will create a bespoke program.
2 Mobile Office
For desk jockeys whose bottoms are spreading to fill the girth of their chairs, there’s a new contraption to help you burn calories while you blaze through work. Alread installed at companies like Best Buy and GlaxoSmith-Kline, the Walkstation is a super-slow “treadmill desk” that lets you walk up to eight kilometres a day and burn an extra 100 calories or so an hour. The results can give your metabolism, if not your career, a boost: one customer service rep at an insurance company lost 16 pounds walking two hours a day over two months.
3 Corporate Wellness
Looking for a corporate fitness assessment? Book Heather Good of Creative Balance Wellness, in Calgary, for your next company retreat. Good’s seminars include everything from “Conscious and Mindful Leadership” to workshops on work-life balance. The goal: to help employees “develop more insight into ways of being that are not empowering or getting them what they want in life.” Like an extra week of vacation and another zero on your salary, perhaps?
4 Rub Down
Say the words “quickie massage” and some, uh, unprofessional thoughts might come to mind. But there’s nothing sleazy about the coffee break massage. Places like Massage At Work, a national chain servicing everywhere from Cold Lake to St. Albert and Lloydminster to Lethbridge, will bring their portable chair massage equipment to your workplace for a 15-minute rub down to ease muscles – whether they were strained using Excel (or playing foosball in the lunchroom).
Category: Deskercise, Personal Best
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