Written by Garett Reid | NSCA, CSCS, CISSN, M.S.E.S.S
Fact checked by Kirsten Yovino, CPT Brookbush Institute
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"Use it or lose it!" is a phrase that is incredibly accurate when it comes to our health and fitness, and sitting for extended periods is one of the worst things you can do for your body.
The good news is that physical inactivity is one of the most easily modifiable variables we have to prevent a slew of chronic diseases. The bad news is that the vast majority of the US workforce is in the seated position all through their work day.
While you may not be able to change jobs, there are definitely some seated exercises that you can implement to change your activity level. Let's take a look at some of the best chair exercises to get you started immediately.
Then all that's left to do is keep some dumbbells close to your desk and carve out a few minutes daily to get in some chair exercises!
Table of Contents:
- General Instructions For Chair Exercises
- 6 Best Chair Exercises
- Ideas For Performing Chair Workouts
- Why Are Chair Exercises & Daily Movement So Important?
- How Seated Exercises Improve Health
- Different Training Methods While Performing A Chair Exercise
- FAQs
General Instructions For Chair Exercises
So that we don't need to repeat these for every chair exercise, some chair exercise instructions will apply across the board:
- When performing a chair exercise, try to use a sturdy chair for your exercises as the random waving back and forth and jerky movements may be too much. Ideally, you're able to use a chair with sturdy chair legs.
- If your chair has wheels, be sure you have your brakes on. Depending on your flooring type, this step will become more or less vital. If your chair is on a thick carpet and doesn't roll easily, just keep this in mind. However, as with point #1, if you don't feel secure, try to find a steady chair.
- Always sit tall in your chair exercises and keep your spine straight. Having a straight posture, in general, will improve how you feel throughout the day.
- Keep your feet flat on the floor during chair exercises when you're in a seated position.
Now, let's dive into the individual exercises using a chair.
6 Best Chair Exercises To Help You Move More
Remember that for most people, your main goal is to increase your activity levels daily, so you don't need to be too concerned with using proper loads for these chair exercises. Still, you can do these using simple dumbbells or a resistance band to manage the intensity.
1) Seated Shoulder Press:
The seated shoulder press is a straightforward dumbbell exercise to train your upper body pushing muscles, specifically your shoulder muscles and triceps. Further, because you are sitting, you will also increase your thoracic mobility.
For grip, you can use anything that feels comfortable. Generally, these are performed with an overhand grip or slightly angled. However, you can use a neutral grip if you have issues with shoulder mobility.
Note: I realize the video above obviously doesn't occur in a traditional workplace setting, but the movements you'll follow remain the same.
How to do the Seated Shoulder Press:
- Set up your chair and pick up your set of dumbbells. Slide backward so your back slightly touches the chair's back.
- Pick up your dumbbells and bring them up to your shoulders. With elbows bent, place them out to your side, slightly in front of your body. Position your elbows pointing out at a 45-degree angle. Bring your hands so they're vertical and over your elbows, and raise your upper arms to slightly below parallel with the ground. This is the starting position.
- Retract your shoulder blades by trying to squeeze them together. Slowly extend your arms straight overhead. The dumbbells will move upward in a curving motion as they come together at the top.
2) Seated Marching:
Seated marching is a great method to increase your daily activity, especially for seniors. Seated marching simply involves pumping your legs up and down as if you're marching in place. That's it.
As the primary goal of this exercise is to move, the actual height of your knees doesn't matter too much and will likely be determined by your desk height.
To give yourself a goal, aim for 5 minutes every 30-60 minutes. You don't want to be consumed with tracking the time if you need to work or are otherwise busy.
How to do Seated Marching:
- If you can easily adjust your chair's seat height, you may want to lower it so that the top of your thighs are parallel to the ground while on your ties.
- Pick up your right leg as high as you can with relative ease. You don't want to strain too much. After hitting the peak, slowly bring it down until it's back on the ground.
- Keep your left foot planted until both feet are back on the floor. Then, repeat the movement with your left leg.
- Continue as above, steadily alternating legs.
3) Under Desk Stair Steppers, Ellipticals, & Treadmills:
Luckily, the risks of being sedentary have started to be taken seriously, launching various pieces of exercise equipment to help combat this "silent disease." A few options include under-desk stair steppers and ellipticals, which allow for exercise throughout the day.
Check out the under-desk elliptical workout in the video above for ideas on how you can stay active throughout your workday.
Because you can do these while working, we advise you to use an easy setting that allows you to perform the exercise for an extended period. Check out our article on the 7 Best Under-Desk Ellipticals to find your perfect fit!
4) Leg And Arm Circles:
Another great exercise for both the lower and upper body involves making circles with your extended legs or arms. I like using the legs as you can do them while still actively working, but both are great for creating blood flow and adding in a little break.
Even though these are "simple," if you've done arm circles in PE class during middle school, you know these can be intense.
How to do Leg & Arm Circles:
- For leg circles, you can choose one leg at a time or both. Pick up your legs straight ahead of your body. However, the leg does not need to be parallel to the ground. You just want it high enough so you have free movement.
- Now, slowly rotate your leg in circles. To guide you, you can first rotate a leg clockwise while rotating the opposite leg counterclockwise. After ten circles, switch directions. You can also mess around by making bigger and smaller circles.
- You can then switch to repeat as necessary.
- For arm circles, lift your arms straight out in front or out to the side. Unlike your legs, you want to try and get these higher so your arms are almost parallel to the ground, either out to the side or front.
- Slowly make circles until your arms are fatigued. You can even move your arms in opposite directions for an extra mental boost. For example, have your left arm make a forward circle, while your right arm makes a backward circle.
Giving a number is tough, but I would say do circles until failure every 30-60 minutes or so.
5) Bulgarian Split Squat:
The Bulgarian split squat is my choice for squatting when looking for chair exercises. I like these rather than standard squats because they're more challenging to do, meaning you don't need as many for a lower-body workout.
These are standing exercises, so you'll need to stand up and utilize your chair. Finding the correct position to perform these may take some time, but it will come naturally once you find it.
As these are tough, try to run through sets of 5 reps per leg for however many sets you need. You can perform these every hour or every other hour.
How to do Bulgarian Split Squats:
- Use your desk chair to rest your back leg. Let's use the right leg for our example. Stand about two feet away from your chair.
- Raise your right (back) leg and position your back foot on your chair, near the edge. Have your front foot point forward.
- Activate your core muscles and pull your shoulders backward. Lower down by moving directly downward. While your front left knee can move forward, it should consistently follow the direction of your toes. Continue descending until your rear right knee makes contact with the ground.
- Drive your front foot against the ground to start the upward movement of your body. Engage your core throughout the entire motion to ensure your torso remains upright.
- Rise until your leg reaches full extension.
6) Sit On A Bosu Ball:
Using a Bosu ball as a chair is a great idea to activate your muscles without thinking about it. You can't just recline and relax because the ball rolls, is soft, and without a back.
As a result, these demand great posture and automatically activate all your core muscles and lower body.
How to sit on a Bosu Ball:
- Place the ball in front of your workstation. You'll likely find placing the ball close to your desk more comfortable than a few feet back. Sit with your butt in the middle of the ball.
- While sitting tall, keep your torso straight and keep your shoulder blades pulled back. For your lower body, you have two options. One, sit with your legs out in front of your body and feet flat on the floor. Two, pull your feet backward with your knees bent and toes pointed.
- Once you find a comfortable starting position, you want to try and stay there as you sit.
If you choose this method, you can also use the Bosu ball to perform other exercises, such as crunches or the chest press.
Ideas For Performing Chair Workouts
Circuit workouts are a great example of how to put together a quick chair workout.
In fact, a quick circuit on your breaks can do wonders. Remember that Tabata's are only 4 minutes long and can significantly improve fitness variables. Now I'm not suggesting you do a Tabata in your office, the point is you don't need 1 hour to get in an effective workout.
When running a circuit, your main goal is to bring each exercise to failure. This means you can simply do 1 set of a series of exercises with as many reps as needed to almost complete fatigue. Again, your ability depends on your dress attire and space. That said, here are some exercises that can work.
- Push-ups or Wall Push-ups
- Body Squats
- Wall Sits
- Normal Jumping Jack
- Chair Dips
For more great ideas to help you move more at work, check out our article on the 9 Best Desk Exercises!
Why Are Chair Exercises & More Daily Movement Important?
As mentioned above, our physical health can be determined by how much work we do throughout the day. Many people believe that they can compensate for their physical inactivity because they go to the gym after sitting for 10 hours. You can't.
Reducing sitting time is as crucial to improving physical health as engaging in a regular exercise program¹. Physical inactivity is recognized as an easily modifiable behavior that can provide an array of benefits, such as:
- Decreased risk of chronic disease
- Decreased risk of non-communicable disease
- Improved mental state
- Decreased burden on the healthcare system²
How Much Movement Do You Need?
By now, you've probably heard of the 10,000 steps a day rule. You may be surprised that there's no actual evidence for this number. In fact, "10,000 steps" is the translation of the Japanese word Manpo-Kei, a Japanese step counter from 1965, which literally means 10,000 meters³.
This number was simply used as a marketing tool and was a sufficient amount of daily activity to improve health.
Don't let that get you down because, as it turns out, this idea has a lot of truth. Research examining this claim has discovered that the threshold of health benefits seems to occur at just 7,500 steps. While this is 25% less than the 10,000 steps, sedentary people generally only get around 2,500 steps daily.
As a result, you need to somehow get in another 5,000 steps or the equivalent in low-intensity exercise.
How Chair Exercises Improve Health
If you're assigned to sit at a desk all day, or you're just getting older with reduced mobility, a regular exercise program built with seated exercises will do wonders for your health.
By using chair exercises, you can increase your daily activity while you're working, watching TV, or chatting on the phone! While you definitely don't want to sacrifice your work or family time just to get in some movement, seated exercises provide easy, comfortable ways to move so this isn't a problem.
What's The Goal Of Seated Exercises?
Although training in the gym strengthens your muscles, chair exercises probably don't have heavy enough resistance to produce meaningful muscle growth.
Therefore, your main goal of seated exercises should be increasing your total movement. You want to minimize your time sitting without exercise to break up the inactivity.
With this in mind, your exercise selection shouldn't be too concerned with "hitting" a specific muscle. Instead, you want the most convenient form of exercise that easily allows you to perform a large volume of low-intensity exercise.
Different Training Methods While Performing A Chair Exercise
While we reviewed some of the best exercises to do while sitting, you can also use several training tools to manipulate load and intensity.
1) Isometric Flexing:
One of the best ways to activate your muscles is simply using isometric holds. While you can do this with any muscle group, it's an awesome tool to use with your abdominal muscles. For example, try flexing your core muscles with 90-95% intensity and holding throughout the day. If you're laughing at this, you've never tried it.
To be clear, I am not saying this is an adequate replacement for barbell rollouts and cable crunches. However, the evidence behind isometric exercises is growing rapidly, and the results are impressive⁴. When sitting down all day, these contractions can add up over time.
To be effective, contractions should be above 80% maximal intensity and last 1-5 seconds at a time until reaching 30-90s total.
2) No-Load Training:
Similar to isometric training, no-load training is a "resistance training" method that doesn't use external resistance. Where it differs from isometrics is moving your muscles through a full range of motion.
While this is a relatively new field of research, studies to date are promising. For example, a study from 2019 found that no load training was effective at increasing functional capacity and muscle size in hospitalized women⁵.
Another short review found similar findings⁶. When the muscle is flexed with high intensity throughout a full range of motion, similar adaptations occur as if a load were present.
If you choose to use this method, perform any movement with the same biomechanics, slowly bending and extending the joint while really focusing on the mind-muscle connection. For example, to train your chest muscles, concentrate on squeezing them as you perform chest flys.
Some good chair exercises to use this method with are:
- Seated Chest Press: Sit tall and raise your arms with elbows bent at a 90-degree angle and elbows pointing at about a 45-degree angle. Next, slowly extend your arms straight out in front of your body while focusing on your chest muscles and triceps.
- Seated Row: Reach your arms straight out in front of your body. Be sure to sit tall with your shoulder blades retracted. If the back of the chair is wide or curved, you may need to sit closer to the edge of the chair's seat. Slowly pull your arms back while concentrating on bringing your elbows to the wall behind you.
- Squats: To perform squats, start standing with feet about shoulder-width apart and toes pointed outward slightly. Push your hips back and slowly lower your torso. Continue until the top of your thighs is parallel to the ground. Now, really flex your muscles and drive your feet into the ground. Think about squatting with a barbell on your back to further activate your muscles. Continue until you get back to the starting position.
Because these reps are slow and you're using voluntary maximal contractions, you don't need to do a ton of reps. Assuming each rep takes 6-8 seconds, your muscles will be pretty tired after just five reps. If you keep your muscles flexed between each rep, that's 30-40 seconds of constant tension on your muscles.
Again, I'm not saying this produces the same effects as a full strength training program, but I feel there's enough evidence to suggest value for those forced to sit for long periods.
FAQs
Let's take a look at some other questions you may have about chair exercises.
How can I flatten my stomach sitting in a chair?
The best way to flatten your stomach is with diet and regular exercise, so focus on your caloric intake, quality of food, and total movement throughout the day. For specific ab training, try isometric core contractions.
What is the best sitting position for fat loss?
In general, practicing good posture by sitting up tall on a Bosu ball, using a stair stepper, or riding an exercise bike is best for fat loss.
How long should you sit for at a time?
Although we've offered many options for exercises while seated, try and stand up, stretch, and move around every 30 minutes if possible.
What are the signs of sitting too much?
Sitting too much can cause lower back pain, tight hips, swelling or inflammation in the lower legs, poor posture, weight gain, high blood pressure, and more.
The Best Equipment To Upgrade Your Chair Exercises
If you find that one form of exercise works best for you, just stick with that. Principles of progressive overload and variety don't apply to this training. Further, don't confuse these as doing anything other than providing an avenue to increase your activity.
As such, I personally love the idea of under-desk stair steppers and ellipticals. My top recommendation is the Cubii JR2+. It fits under almost any desk and features 8 resistance levels, along with a display that shows you your strides, time, distance, and calories burned.
Cubii JR2+ includes all the standard features of lightweight construction, portability, and smooth functionality with the added benefit of Bluetooth, allowing you to sync your...
If you're looking for a stair stepper option, my favorite is the Sportsroyals Stair Stepper, a compact fitness stair stepper taking up a fraction of the space of a traditional stepper.
Featuring an LED monitor with exercise time, burned calories, distance in miles, and step count, it uses 2mm steel and precision bearings to provide a slight twisting motion, giving a more natural feel while training at your desk.
Another great option is to keep one of these 10 Folding Treadmills nearby, so you can get walking breaks in throughout the day!
Stay Active With Chair Exercises
While you're not going to build an amazing physique, decrease your body weight, or increase your deadlift with these chair exercises, they shouldn't be ignored.
When it comes to increasing your general health, there's a good argument that increased daily activity trumps an hour in the gym. We've now armed you with various exercises and methods to train the entire body while seated, so there's no reason to be completely sedentary.
Stay moving, stay happy, and stay healthy, regardless of your age or your work schedule.
Ready to move more throughout the day? Pick up one of these 7 Best Under Desk Ellipticals so you can stay active while working.
References:
- Matthews, C. E., Moore, S. C., Sampson, J., Blair, A., Xiao, Q., Keadle, S. K., Hollenbeck, A., & Park, Y. (2015). Mortality Benefits for Replacing Sitting Time with Different Physical Activities. Medicine and science in sports and exercise. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000000621
- Santos, A. C., Willumsen, J., Meheus, F., Ilbawi, A., & Bull, F. C. (2023). The cost of inaction on physical inactivity to public healthcare systems: a population-attributable fraction analysis. The Lancet. Global health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00464-8
- Calechman S. 10,000 steps a day — or fewer? - Harvard Health Blog. Harvard Health Blog. Published July 11, 2019. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/10000-steps-a-day-or-fewer-2019071117305
- Lum D, Barbosa TM. Brief Review: Effects of Isometric Strength Training on Strength and Dynamic Performance. International Journal of Sports Medicine. 2019. doi:10.1055/a-0863-4539
- Counts, B. R., Buckner, S. L., Dankel, S. J., Jessee, M. B., Mattocks, K. T., Mouser, J. G., Laurentino, G. C., & Loenneke, J. P. (2016). The acute and chronic effects of "NO LOAD" resistance training. Physiology & Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2016.06.024
- Barbalho, M., Coswig, V. S., Bottaro, M., de Lira, C. A. B., Campos, M. H., Vieira, C. A., & Gentil, P. (2019). "NO LOAD" resistance training increases functional capacity and muscle size in hospitalized female patients: A pilot study. European journal of translational myology. https://doi.org/10.4081/ejtm.2019.8492
Garett Reid
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