How do I exercise with a desk job?
Find about an hour of moving a day, in pieces, like a walk before work, 10 minutes after lunch and dinner, and the stairs at the office. In over a million adults, people who sat more than 8 hours a day but moved about 60 to 75 minutes had no clear extra risk of death from all that sitting.
Most people with desk jobs do one of two things. They give up, because they can’t fit an hour at the gym into the day, or they do a 30-minute workout at 6 pm and assume it cancels the eight hours before. The first throws away the easiest minutes there are. The second is better than nothing, but in the biggest study of the question, only the most active people, at about an hour a day, showed no extra risk from long days of sitting.
What we’d do
Build the hour out of pieces you can’t easily skip. Walk 20 minutes before you sit down for the day, or get off the bus a stop early. Take a 10-minute brisk walk after lunch and another after dinner. Climb the stairs fast whenever you go for coffee. Then add two strength sessions a week on top.
A desk day is like a bank account with a small fee coming out every hour. A 30-minute workout is one deposit. In the study, it took about an hour of deposits a day to cover the fees.
The study of a million people
In 2016, Ulf Ekelund and colleagues pooled 16 studies with 1,005,791 adults, followed for 2 to 18 years, during which 84,609 died. Each study had asked people how long they sat and how active they were, and the team sorted everyone the same way, by four levels of sitting and four levels of activity.
60 to 75minutes a day
Of moderate activity in the most active group, more than 35.5 MET-hours a week.
No clearextra risk
For people in that group who sat more than 8 hours a day, against the most active who sat least.
12% to 59%higher risk
In the two least active groups, depending on how long they sat.
TV was harder to offset. The most active people still carried some extra risk when they watched a lot of TV, though less than inactive people did. These are people who chose how they spent their days, so the study shows what went with risk, and can’t prove the hour caused the difference.
The first desk job study
The science of exercise started with a sitting job. In the early 1950s, Jeremy Morris compared the crews of London’s double-decker buses. The drivers sat at the wheel all shift, and the conductors climbed the stairs all day. The conductors had less heart disease. He found the same pattern when he compared postmen with government clerks.
Where to find the hour
| When | What | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Before work | A brisk walk, or the last stop on foot | 20 |
| After lunch | A 10-minute brisk walk | 10 |
| During the day | Fast stairs, three times | 3 to 5 |
| After dinner | A 10-minute brisk walk | 10 |
| Evening or weekend | A longer walk, a ride or a class | 15 or more |
The 2018 US guideline counts every one of these pieces, since it dropped the old rule that only 10-minute stretches counted. Short bursts of hard effort, like a fast flight of stairs, went with lower risk of death even in people who never exercised, in a 2022 study of 25,241 UK adults.
Does my workout cancel my sitting? takes your hours sitting and minutes moving and shows how much of the hour is missing. Walking after meals has its own story on blood sugar, which glucose.guide covers.
4 sources
- Ekelund U and others, Does physical activity attenuate, or even eliminate, the detrimental association of sitting time with mortality? A harmonised meta-analysis of data from more than 1 million men and women, Lancet, 2016europepmc.org
- Paffenbarger RS, Blair SN and Lee IM, A history of physical activity, cardiovascular health and longevity: the scientific contributions of Jeremy N Morris, International Journal of Epidemiology, 2001europepmc.org
- Stamatakis E and others, Association of wearable device-measured vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity with mortality, Nature Medicine, 2022europepmc.org
- US Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Top 10 things to know about the second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americansodphp.health.gov
