This 10 Minute Hack Doubled My Productivity, Eliminated Back Pain, And Burnt 1803 Calories!

I realize the title makes claims which sound a bit outlandish — something you’d expect on a sales page.

Which is exactly why I’ve come armed with proof and data to back it all up.

And while the hack isn’t anything complicated (it’s actually very simple), I do promise you one thing: you’ll walk away with information that will literally change the way that you — and everyone around you — gets things done.

I know it has for me.

- How It All Started -

A few years ago, I jammed my L4 & L5 vertebrae together spotting one of my athletes in gymnastics. She was doing a back tuck (backflip, in simple terms) which is a skill she was already competent in. But for some reason, that day she got scared and panicked mid-air.

Of course, I jumped in and carried her through the skill, allowing her to land safely on her back, onto a mat.

She was fine, but the sharp pain I experienced in my lower back told me I wasn’t. To make matters worse this was just a few months before I had to compete at a Powerlifting meet — and I had been training my ass off for it.

Thankfully, a good friend of mine is a post rehab exercise specialist and put me back together just in time, and I went on to break a National Deadlift record (thanks Kris!)

While this was great, I realized just a few months later (as the sharp pain made a return) that my back will never be 100% again. What was I doing that triggered this vicious pain to return? Trying to tie my shoes!

Due to this, I spend about two-three days a week doing specialized stretches and exercises that kept my lower back in check. On top of that, a solid warm up before doing any type of workout was an absolute must.

I had come to terms with the fact that I’d most likely be doing this for the rest of my life. I simply cannot sit for long periods of time, or the pain returns.

But being someone who creates training and nutrition plans for athletes while also being an author and content creator with deadlines, there are days I simply cannot escape my desk.

So I got myself an ergonomic chair (don’t worry, this isn’t the hack!)

It certainly improved things… but the improvement wasn’t worth $400 in my opinion.

And so for the past few years I’ve always had to set a timer which reminds me to stand up if I stay seated for more than two hours.

I just accepted this as part of life.

Two weeks ago though, I had my laptop in the kitchen (something I never do), and while I was standing and making my coffee, I got carried away responding to my emails.

In fact, an entire hour flew by before I realized that I had just gone through 5 client emails (which are usually very time-consuming) while standing inside my kitchen. In my boxers. Sipping on what once was a hot cup of coffee.

And that’s when it hit me…

My “Duh… Of Course!” Moment

The media has already shown us that sitting down for long periods of time is destroying our posture, tanking metabolic rates, making us sluggish, and generally leading to an early death.

And if by chance you didn’t know, allow me to share some interesting facts on how bad sitting down for extensive periods can be:

In 2010, the American Cancer Society published a study where they tracked 123,216 individuals from 1993–2006, and here’s what they found:

• Men who were inactive and sat over 6 hours a day were 48% more likely to die than their standing counterparts
• Women who were inactive and sat for over 6 hours a day were 94% more likely to die than those who sat only 3 hours per day
• Most shocking of all, these findings were independent of physical activity — so even if you spent 2 hours a week specifically going to the gym to become “more physically active,” the negative effects of sitting would still bite you in the ass!

Dr. Genevieve Healy, a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and someone who’s done some ground-breaking work into the effects of sitting and a sedentary lifestyle had this to say: “30 minutes a day at the gym may not counteract the detrimental effects of 8, 9 or 10 hours of sitting.”

Cardiologist Martha Grogan from the Mayo Clinic said “For people who sit most of the day, their risk of heart attack is about the same as smoking”

And the British Journal of Sports Medicine has famously stated that “Prolonged sitting should be considered within occupational health and safety policies and practices just like other elements of posture.”

Now whether or not you were aware of how bad sitting is, the real issue is this: How many of you will either do something about your current situation in the next day, or have done something about your situation based on facts you already knew?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Where “The Hack” Comes In

Knowing is not enough, as they say. We must try! So I’m going to show you how I put all of this great information into practice.

After my productive kitchen email session, I rushed upstairs to my desktop computer — which is my main workhorse, and set about turning the desk it sits on into a standing workstation. Below is the rig I built in about 10 minutes using nothing but some old college textbooks, and an ironing table:

I then spent the rest of the day doing my work as usual.

Of course, I took breaks when I needed to eat or just walk around the house to stimulate the idea fairy — in the hopes that she would swing by and drop some gems in my brain.

But the point is, during the time I needed to be productive, there was minimal sitting.

The Testing Phase

From what I could tell initially, the standing workstation definitely felt more productive, but feelings don’t constitute as evidence. While I’m only a one-man army, I knew I could still do a fairly decent test to see exactly how much (or how little) of a difference a standing setup made.

So for the next week I went back to my sitting arrangement and clocked the following metrics:

• Average number of emails per hour (7)
• Average number of words produced per hour (610)
• Average amount of time I was distracted looking at social media, YouTube etc. (72 mins — used an app called RescueTime. I have a paid subscription and highly recommend it.)

A Breakdown Of My Week

I spend about ten total hours per day on work, seven days per week. This includes time spent on research, reading books and blog posts that are educational or beneficial etc. I include all of these activities as “essential work” in those ten hour days. The rest is spent on workouts, eating, video games and other randomness.

Now out of those seven days, I coach tumbling (the flipping portion of gymnastics) three days per week for about 4–5 hours. This means the total amount of desk/sitting down work I do is 56 (ish).

And uhm, that’s a shit load of sitting! So what happened the following week when those same 56 (ish) hours were spent standing?

The Results

• Avg emails/hour: 11.5 (64% improvement)
• Avg number of words/hour: 930 (52% improvement)
• Avg distraction time: 56 mins (28% improvement)
• Combined avg improvement: 48%

The “Why” Behind The Amazing Results

When it comes to cognitive tasks, the one thing that can instantly improve brain function (besides taking Adderall) is a natural increase in blood flow.

And guess what sitting down for too long does? Yup, it starts to restrict optimal blood flow in the body. And when blood isn’t flowing the way it should, oxygen delivery and distribution is hampered throughout the body. And when you don’t have access to enough blood and oxygen, you end up with terrible nutrient uptake.

Now guess which is one of the most nutrient hungry organs in the body?

Yup, your noggin. In fact, the brain can use up to 20% of your daily calories from carbohydrates!

But restrict blood flow and that 20% quickly drops, resulting in your IQ freefalling like the stock market back in 2008.

Now that’s not all, things get even better!

Remember my lower back? Well, standing has essentially eliminated my need to take random stretch breaks.

In fact, my neck feels more relaxed than ever, and while my posture was always decent due to what I do and my fancy chair, I definitely feel an improvement. You may think this is anecdotal evidence (just one man’s positive experience) but there is logic behind it.

See, when you sit for long periods of time — especially at terrible angles, you’re at the mercy of gravity. As a result, the weight of your upper body tends to hunch or sag putting unnecessary pressure on your vertebrae.

Dr. Rob Dickerman has this to say: “Sitting at a desk for long periods and doing repetitive tasks increases the chance for lower back and upper neck injuries due to the stress it creates on muscles and joints. This type of stress can help contribute to degenerative discs, pinched nerves, muscle strain, and misalignment of the spine. Sitting significantly loads the lumbar spine discs and facet joints as compared to standing.”

I Haven’t Even Gotten To The Best Part About Standing: An Excuse To Eat More Nutella!

Full Disclosure: This is a book I wrote, and I strongly recommend Nutella in it.

The beauty of standing is that it increases your NEAT levels.

NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenisis. In simple terms, NEAT activities are anything that help your body burn calories, but don’t constitute as demanding physical exercise. Things like fidgeting, gesturing, waving your arm around, laughing, and generally just existing.

Individually these activities may seem negligible, but add them together over the course of a few days, and you have a dramatically altered metabolic rate.

According to the calculator provided by juststand.org, a 140lbs person (me) who sits for 8 hours a day for 7 days burns about 6037 calories. If that same person was to work standing, they would burn about 7840 calories.

That’s a weekly increase of 1803 calories burnt.

Or to put into perspective, you would need to swim for about 3.3 hours to burn that much off!

So what does that really mean in the real world? Well you basically get to have an extra snack every day without your weight changing. Or better yet, you can take advantage of such a deficit if you’re working on losing weight (most people are).

Now I should say that caloric math is never 100% accurate — I use my own proprietary formula to calculate the nutrition requirements for my clients and athletes.

And that’s based on years of experience.

Having said that, juststand.org ‘s math isn’t too bad. You won’t get ripped and lean by just standing all day (you need a real plan for that) but it should help, especially for those that are overweight and pushing the definition of “obese.” For such individuals, spending half their work day standing is an awesome hack.

When Standing Isn’t Always The Best Idea

In my picture above, I’m sure you noticed a red lounge chair. It’s my dedicated reading chair that I picked up from Ikea (and burnt many calories trying to put it together).

But I bought that thing for a very specific reason: it has a permanent recline of around 130 degrees. This reduces the compression in the spine while allowing your chest, shoulder and neck muscles to relax.

If there’s a task where sitting is required (such as when reading — which I recommend) then I get a chair with the proper recline angle. Everything else should be done standing.

How To Train Your Body To Stand

I don’t recommend jumping into this standing business cold turkey. I did, but I consider myself an exception for the following reasons:

1. I did Karate for many, many years and it was all barefoot training. I have clauses that act like permanent leather soles on my feet.
2. I then became a gymnast and a power tumbler which was again, all barefoot training where your feet take a pounding. So in comparison, standing is a cake walk.
3. As a powerlifter, lifting massive loads means the contact patch between the feet and floor have be minimized. Doing 410 lbs deadlifts with running shoes is like standing on sand — it’s extremely unstable. So I’m either wearing shoes with very thin soles or again, just going barefoot.

Basically, barefoot standing for hours on end wasn’t a huge stretch for me. In fact, I felt right at home. You on the other hand, probably won’t. So here’s a little protocol I’ve designed just for you:

1. Create a list of tasks the night before. Like literally everything you need to get done.
2. Batch your tasks into two groups: The first group includes tasks that that are totally creatively focused (brainstorming, writing etc.). The second group should include tasks that don’t require too much creative output, but are consider more “grunt work” such as answering emails, making calls, crunching numbers, filling orders and so on.
3. Do all the grunt work while standing. If this means you only spend 3 out of your 7 hour work day standing, so be it. But for the first week, only stand for grunt work.
4. The second week, do only all creative tasks standing.
5. Week three, make the full transition. Oh and buy yourself a standing desk mat — it’ll make your barefoot experience more comfortable. Especially if you have hardwood flooring.

This protocol allows you to ease yourself into the swing of things, and you can clearly see which type of task will benefit most from standing. If you find that your creativity has improved from standing while the grunt work has you tired, then keep it that way for a few months.

Eventually though, your body will adapt.

Will You Take The Plunge?

If you made it this far, then I must first thank you for reading along. I know I used a lot of words to simply say “get off your ass, and start standing,” but hopefully you found the information useful (if you did, please take a moment to share this article with your friends or hit the Recommend button below)

But most importantly, I want to know if you’ll take the plunge and start doing your work standing. Drop a reply or a comment anywhere on this article and I’d love to chat about it.

About The Author

Sahil M. is the founder of Hardcore Training Solutions and has authored multiple books on training and nutrition. He is also a Gymnastics and Powerlifting coach and has helped everyone from record-holding athletes to regular folks look and perform at their absolute best. If you’d like to work with him personally, go here to fill out an application for a Free no-obligation consultation. If you’re the right fit, he’ll get you in the best shape of your life!