10 Standing Desk Yoga Poses to Create a Strong Core & Relieve Back, Hip, and Knee Pain
The Relationship Between Standing Desks and Yoga :
It’s never a bad idea to make a stand. Sometimes our knees just creak while we do it.
Whether we work in an office or work from home, our physical health must remain priority number one. That’s a big reason behind the recent wave of office workers and remote workers gravitating toward standing desks. Standing desks get us closer to where we want to be—from a health standpoint as well as a practical one.
Even so, we still need to do our part to fully restore our bodies. Luckily for us, a healthy, low-impact, good-feeling activity that pairs awesomely with your standing desk—an activity that you can start right now —exists. And it goes by the name of yoga.
Cast aside any preconceived notions you may have about the practice and try to remember that nagging ache in your lower back and how stiffly you move around in the morning. That tightness in your hips that restricts your gait to a glitchy stutter-step. That popcorn kernel crackling in your knees whenever you rise to your feet. That occasional inward question: “Have I ever actually had inner thigh muscles?” Your standing desk has helped iron out some of the wrinkles, but the reality is we have a lifetime’s worth of bad sitting to undue.
Similar to getting a standing desk without adopting an exercise routine, doing yoga on its own won’t be enough if you’re just going to return to a desk that’s bad for your posture, muscles, and joints. That’s why office workers and people who work from home are often advised to start with standing desks—such as the EGD 62" RGB Electric Standing Gaming Desk—before diving into physical exercise.
Here’s what to know ahead of time: Sitting habits are known to have long-term effects, particularly when it comes to the health of our backs, knees, and hips. After all, they do all connect and rely on each other, with a strong core helping maintain that solid, healthy connection between your back, hips, and knees.
… But the monotonous routine of the workday can—and often does, over time—weaken our core muscles, leading to additional consequences. Some people experience discomfort in the early days of their standing desk use; this comes as a direct result of prolonged sitting weakening their abdominal muscles and creating tension in surrounding muscles and soft tissues.
You may look at these diminished muscles and think you’re starting from scratch, but you’re really not. Your standing desk—especially if it’s well-designed and has advanced technology—opens up a whole world of possibilities, where you can learn to be more aware of your body than ever before. Incorporating into your workday simple yoga poses, practiced a few minutes each, can lead to major improvements in the health and mobility of your back, hips, and knees.
So, let’s say we’ve already made the jump from daily standard desk use to daily standing desk use—unfortunately we haven’t been freed entirely, as we’d so hoped, from the aches and pains that come from a long workday. Understand it’s a process. The fact is, if all you’re doing is standing, you’re operating at maybe a hair above sitting activity-wise. And if your core is weak, you’ll feel the effects. That’s okay—progress comes quicker than you think once you employ a fresh attitude and dedicated routine.
Start by reframing your thought process around how you use your standing desk: The endgame’s not about not sitting, it’s about achieving and maintaining healthy physical mobility. With the tag team of a standing desk and a steady yoga routine, the benefits to your knees, hips, and back will outlast the pain they went through to land you here. Standing desk users working from home or the office will reap these benefits the most by reading on.
So, without further ado, let’s get down (up?) to business. Explore the following yoga poses to maximize the health benefits afforded by your standing desk.
1. Chair Pose ( Utkatasana)
I know what you’re thinking—“I just got a standing desk and the first yoga pose you recommend to me is one where I pretend I’m sitting?” Yes. The truth is, when we’re actually sitting, we’re not activating our legs at all. Chair Pose merely replicates the shape your body makes while sitting. Counterintuitively, this pose works to undue a lot of the damage endured from a sedentary lifestyle.
Chair Pose primarily fires up your hamstrings and inner and outer thighs, the first muscles to atrophy from prolonged sitting. It also activates your hip abductors to not only strengthen this area but remove tightness and increase inner hip rotational ability—something that men (famously known for tight hips) will especially benefit from. With a slight tuck of the tailbone, the spine lengthens and core engages to bear the weight of your torso. This encourages healthy posture and less stress on your back. Staying in this pose will work to solidify the muscle mass around the knees, as well, protecting vulnerable soft tissues such as the ACL and meniscus. Literally every aspect of this yoga pose will work to the advantage of the standing desk user.
2. Warrior One ( Virabhadrasana)
Even people who only have a passing familiarity with yoga will recognize this one. It looks simple, but it’s not. Warrior One requires full-body awareness (okay, all yoga poses do, but this one especially). Holding yourself in Warrior One engages the calves and thighs in the lower body to provide a strong base and develop knee security, while in the upper body a long spine works to pull the obliques away from the hip flexors. Maintaining all of these to strengthen your core creates, as a byproduct, the most exquisite stretch.
Visualize a line of energy from your back heel all the way to the base of your skull. Using that back leg to ground down, breathe and see how your body responds. The subtle effects will become more pronounced over time with consistent practice. As with every yoga pose, the point is trifold: create length, build strength, and optimize range of motion.
Try this one out in front of your Call of Duty® Precision L Standing Desk and see who wobbles first.
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3. Crescent Lunge ( Ashta Chandrasana)
This one will be similar to Warrior One, at least from the waist up (keeping the emphasis on creating length through the tailbone to the back of the neck). The major difference will be in the positioning of the hind leg. This time you will lift your heel straight up (toward the ceiling to keep it active) and your leg with it. This will engage the muscles around your knee, giving it support, while also generating a line of energy from your heel to your tailbone. Your foot gets a nice stretch in, too.
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You’ll get many of the benefits in Crescent Lunge that you’ll get in Warrior One, but the focus on strengthening that back leg helps to loosen up your hip flexors and abductors and develop a more solid connection between the lower body and upper body as well as front body and back body.
Feel free to modify this pose by letting the arms go and leaning your palms into your standing desk, pushing away. Just one of many ways in which office workers and people who work from home can incorporate their standing desk workstation into their yoga routine.
4. Forward Fold ( Uttanasana)
For standing desk users, this yoga pose will most likely have already come intuitively as a stretch they’ve performed to take some of the pressure off their sacrum and let their knees catch a quick breather.
You can easily modify Forward Fold for a more concentrated compression between the shoulder blades by interlacing your fingers behind your back and letting your head hang like a dumbbell. This loosens the shoulder and promotes spinal alignment.
5. Triangle Pose (Trikonasana)
If you’ve been at your electric standing desk for a while, you’re bound to appreciate Trangle. The point of this yoga pose is to become conscious of lines of energy between major points of the body. As you hinge forward from your hips, you’ll feel a lengthening sensation in your hamstrings. That’s just the beginning of what many claim to be their favorite hip-opening pose.
People who use standing desks and complain of lower back pain love to sing the praises of Triangle Pose because it takes the pressure off their sacrum and removes tightness from the backs of their legs. If you want to maximize the length provided by your standing desk, look to this pose for a boost.
6. Half-moon ( Ardha Chandrasana)
Slightly more complicated, but still very much a boon for office workers looking for more flexibility and balance. If balance isn’t one of your strong suits, that’s okay—you can easily modify Half-moon Pose by using a block or two under your hands. Having perfect balance here is secondary—what we’re looking for is a deep stretch in our standing leg and to create an even line from the heel of our raised foot to the crown of our head. Engage your core, and the advantages of Half-moon come into full focus.
For people still making the adjustment from standard to standing desk, Half-moon Pose offers an effective way to remove tension and promote length for healthy hips, knees, and spines.
Feeling extra adventurous? You can try a bind, reaching back to grab your airborne foot, so you can try to mirror the shape of your EGD L60. If nothing else, it’ll make for a good photo op.
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7. Side-bending Mountain ( Parsava Tadasana)
A variation on the simple, foundational pose (Tadasana, or: Mountain) that you see here. What makes this super helpful for spine health especially is that it strengthens the side body. If you visualize your core and side body as a corset for your spine, you start to get a good idea of what a functioning anatomy looks like.
Reach one arm into the air and stretch it across your body overhead. With your other arm, reach your fingertips as far down your leg as you can. Breathe into the space this creates along the side of your ribcage. Side-bending Mountain does us a great service by targeting neglected areas of our core to aid the health of other crucial areas of our body.
8. Bridge ( Setu Bandha Sarvangasana)
Before you get too discouraged (“Aw, I have to get on the ground for this one?!”), one could make the argument that this is one of if not the most important poses on the list. Sure, you just got a standing desk, so the floor is a little further away than usual. But I promise it’s worth it.
In large part, our lower backs—specifically, our lower back pain—brought us here. Brought us to weighing our decision between the Precision L Shape Standing Desk and the EGD 60 Inch L Shape Standing Desk, brought us to trying to nail Forward Fold. Just like Forward Fold, Bridge targets the lower back—only in the other direction.
Bridge Pose allows us to use the strength of our glutes and our hamstrings to massage our sacrum and engage our cores. Everything good, all in one. Lower back pain, prepare to meet your maker.
Don’t worry if it looks like it could be uncomfortable, or if you think you may not be strong enough to hold it. Like Half-moon, you can use a block for support (and/or added massage). That awesome headrush you get when you stand back up at your desk? You were warned.
9. Up Dog ( Urdhva Mukha Shvanasana)
Not unlike Bridge Pose, Up Dog focuses on your torso to add flexibility and stability to your core. If when you get into this pose you find your hips drop below your chest—raise them up. With the hips so low, you’re putting extra pressure on your lower back, which will only lead to more lower back pain. Prolonging the problem rather than resolving it? Not what you had in mind when you got your standing desk and made the decision to value your health more!
When doing this pose, try to maintain awareness of your lower core muscles, near your pelvic region. As they stretch, they will also stretch your hip flexors. When your hip flexors stretch, your hip abductors stretch. And when your hip abductors stretch, your knees get some love. See all these things coming together? Standing, sitting, knees, hips, back. A matrix of cause and effect—one which Up Dog shows it is very much aware of.
Stand up a little taller with this yoga classic.
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10. Down Dog ( Adho Mukha Svanasana)
Bet you saw this one coming. Everyone’s favorite yoga pose to reference just so happens to be a foundational pose for yogis of the standing desk variety.
It’s not corny or cliché to include Down Dog in your routine. This pose has earned its spot on practically any list of good yoga poses you find. It effectively addresses knee pain, hip pain, and back pain (especially lower and upper back pain) by turning your body into a triangle, creating symmetry that benefits you literally from head to toe.
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Even if your standing desk, like the EGD L60, is of the absolute highest quality, you may still find yourself yearning to deepen your relationship with your body. So why not try out some yoga?
Standing desks reintroduce stability, mobility, and vitality to office workers and people who work from home to restore—and broaden the horizons of—their physical health. Yoga poses aimed at eliminating knee pain, hip pain, and back pain increase quality of life in the short term and for the long haul. Simply put: Standing desks and yoga make a great team.
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