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When our facility opened 17 years ago we had over six times the equipment in our facility than we do currently. Not to mention that our facility was one third smaller than it is now. Why? Great question!

There is a mountain of irrefutable scientific evidence to support staying off of your butt when you workout. Here are just a few reasons to never sit down when you exercise:

• Posture- We already spend way too much time in a seated position. Prolonged sitting promotes a head forward, shoulder rounded posture. The last thing you want to do in the gym is promote more bad postural habits by sitting down for all of your exercises. Read: AVOID EXERCISE MACHINES!!!
• Calorie Expenditure- You are going to burn far more calories when you use your legs and core musculature to support your body while you lift. Involving more muscles means higher energy requirements. You need to burn more than you take in to lose fat.
• Flexibility- When you sit you are shortening your hamstrings and hip flexors. These areas are normally very tight on most adults. By staying on your feet and mimicking primal movements (squatting, lunging, pushing, and pulling), you are essentially undoing some of the damage caused by excess sitting.
• Stability- Standing exercises challenge your ability to stabilize external forces. We have seen many machine trained adults who could lift significant weight on a machine, but couldn’t muster half of that weight while mimicking that same movement with free weights. So you need to improve your balance? Get on your feet!

Let’s face it, it’s just easier to simply slog your way through a machine circuit or sit down and perform arm curls. But, just like most things in life, if it’s too easy, you’re probably not getting any benefit.