Our ancestors were strong and active. Having a strong and resilient physique was vital for survival. Although progress has improved the quality of life, despite the advancement of technology, modern man has become sedentary. He no longer uses his muscles in the way he evolved to do. His body is becoming progressively weaker.
The decline of the strong man began with the arrival of the industrial revolution and the massive drive towards urbanisation, when the chair became an accessory in every home. Since the mid-20th century, in particular, people have spent more and more time sitting. Today they do so for more than eight hours a day. Almost half of their freetime is spent on television and devices, despite the fact that these leisure activities are far from harmless. Even in the gym, more often than not, one works out sitting down.
Many researches have attempted to estimate the potential impact of sedentariness on health. A meta-analysis of studies involving more than 1.3 million unique participants (Patterson et al., 2018) showed that prolonged sitting (more than 7 hours in any activity) increases the risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, high levels of inactivity in the adult and elderly population are correlated with decreased cognitive function, depression, functionality and disability.
In short, sitting reduces life expectancy. Recent research estimates that 3.8-5.9% of all deaths are due to time spent sitting daily.
From Homo erectus to the sedentariness of modern times: evolution or involution?
The appearance our bodies have today is the result of a long evolutionary journey. Millions of years long. After the gain of intelligence, one of the defining characteristics of our species is undoubtedly the acquisition of the erect posture, and consequently bipedal locomotion.
To support the upright posture of the trunk, the column acquired different curvatures, in the frontal and sagittal planes. These curves, together with the musculoskeletal system, contribute to keeping the torso erect during rest and locomotion. The buttocks help keep the trunk erect on the lower limbs and give the necessary thrust to extend the thigh and during the dynamic phases of locomotion.
Let’s go back in time for a moment. Seventy thousand years ago (long before the birth of Homo sapiens), our European ancestors had to survive the last ice age. They fed themselves by hunting and gathering tubers and roots. They had a suitable physical structure to develop power and resistance to fatigue. To walk over rough terrain and in the cold.
Progress and technology have simplified life, making everything faster and at their fingertips. But the cost to pay is the ever-increasing sedentariness.
Is reducing sedentariness enough to live better and longer?
In a world that is lazier than ever, every movement counts. This is according to the WHO, which updated its physical activity guidelines in 2020. But simply being more active is not enough.
The solution is active living, a lifestyle that includes at least thirty minutes of physical activity every day. Added to this is health enhancing physical activity, moderate physical activity that must have an energy expenditure of at least 3-6 METs (sitting, for example, has a metabolic equivalent of 1 MET).
To achieve maximum health and fitness benefits, exercise must include both strengthening of the major muscle groups and an as well as an aerobic component.
Traditional training leads to building strong muscles, but strengthening individual muscles is not functional in everyday life. Since every activity requires strength, the solution is to improve physical efficiency. Develop a strong physique as a whole.
According to current scientific evidence, this can be achieved by training the human body as a whole, as a system, with strength training in the kinetic chain. Effective strength training challenges the entire physiology of human movement, which has nervous, muscular and skeletal components working in harmony to achieve optimal results. The most natural and effective way to do this is with full body training in an standing position.
To be sedentary is to be weak. To become strong, training must be evolved.
To provide a specific response to all the health and longevity needs of modern man, Teca has taken up the indications of science and developed Stand Up, the first isotonic strength machine that trains the entire body with functional, multi-joint, kinetic chain and standing exercises.
Stand Up technology reboots the engine of the human machine, the muscles, and does so in the safest and most effective way, bringing people back to training in the same condition in which we evolved as a species. Standing up. Training the body with exercises that involve the kinetic chains and not individual muscles is the most natural and effective way to return to being the strong man we once were.
The standing position is the most physiological way to train. Standing reduces the stress on the spine by 30 to 40 per cent compared to sitting. The reason is simple: the load is distributed among the various muscles that make up the various kinetic chains.
Thanks to the chain movements, the Teca Stand Up machines engage 90% of the muscles in each exercise. The core and lower limbs, muscle groups that are particularly weakened by sitting, are always active.
For this reason, Teca Stand Up allows effective muscular strengthening of the entire body, in full respect of joint physiology and without risking the risk of abnormal compensation. While standing, it is also possible to vary the base of support to create unstable conditions: this also improves balance and proprioception.
Training in an upright position helps rebuild motor patterns altered by sedentariness. This is possible because the exercises on Teca Stand Up faithfully reproduce the most common movements of everyday life and, as a result, the most important motor patterns, such as pushing, squatting, pulling or hip movements.
Standing exercise can correct some of the most common postural and circulatory problems, such as hunched shoulders and back, joint discomfort and pain, or constriction of blood vessels in the lower limbs and core.
Standing muscle training on Teca Stand Up has a higher caloric expenditure than sitting exercise. In the context of a dynamic workout, thus circuit training, Teca Stand Up becomes one of the most effective devices for controlling weight and cardio-metabolic risk factors associated with excess adipose and insufficient levels of muscle mass. The reason is simple: by using several muscle groups simultaneously, the heart works harder for the whole body and thus heart rate, energy expenditure and oxygen deficit (EPOC effect) increase. In particular, the energy expenditure of circuit training on the Teca Stand Up is close to 10 METs.
Circuit training on the Teca Stand Up offers combined results in a single session: more general muscle trophism thanks to over load shifting, improved cardiovascular function, aerobic endurance and weight loss. Thus the body becomes stronger, fitter and also more resilient.
Today we have one more reason to be Stand Up.
