SIT STRONG

Sub-titled 'Everyday Exercises to Stretch and Strengthen Your Posture' this pictorial guide is produced on pale orange or blue coloured pages with attractive modern fonts and design and clear colour diagrams and labels. Our bodies really suffer from our sedentary lifestyles with hours spent sitting, working at desks, driving in cars or slumped on the couch. This weakens muscles and affects our posture and the result is aches and pains, headaches, digestive disorders and fatigue. All can be improved through regular, gentle stretching and strengthening exercises to improve flexibility. Divided into five main areas - head and neck, upper back and shoulders, arms, lower back and bottom, and legs - each chapter provides a series of gentle, movement-based exercises designed to target areas that can be badly affected. They can be easily fitted into everyday life and adapted into a series of personalised routines to help you get started. Page 77 explains in detail all the muscles of the buttocks, in conjunction with the abdominal muscles which also support the lower back, keeping the pelvic girdle and hip in a good position. We are taken through a series of exercises including the buttock clench, pelvic floor squeezes, gentle backward stretch, lunge, piriformis stretch to ease lower back pain and even sciatica, a two-knee twist and finally the bridge, the most effective stretch, even if tricky at first, easy to build on. 144pp. Colour.