Does adherence to workplace-based exercises alter physical capacity, pain intensity and productivity?

Role of work breaks in well-being and performance: A systematic review and future research agenda.

“…While work breaks represent a recovery opportunity, this opportunity might take different forms in terms of activities and/or experiences that help employees restore their resources (Demerouti et al, 2001; Hobfoll, 1989; Kaplan, 1995). For instance, employees might detach from work (e.g., Bosch et al, 2018), engage in physical exercise (e.g., Barros et al, 2019), check their emails (Fritz et al, 2011), or browse social media (e.g., Kühnel et al, 2017; Syrek et al, 2018). In the following sections, we use these five features of work breaks to guide our overarching framework and apply it to the existing evidence on work breaks among knowledge workers.…”

“…potential to improve an array of physical well-being indicators, such as shoulder (Barros et al, 2019;Ren et al, 2019), increased physical activity (Brown et al, 2014;Carr et al, 2016;Michishita, Jiang, Ariyoshi, Yoshida, Moriyama, Obata, et al, 2017;Taylor et al, 2016), reduced pain (Irmak et al, 2012;Lacaze et al, 2010;Park et al, 2017), reduced discomfort (Galinsky et al, 2007;Henning et al, 1997;Lacaze et al, 2010), and reduced sedentary time (Taylor et al, 2016). However, the positive effects of exercise breaks on physical well-being are maintained during a limited time range and may disappear within 24 weeks after the intervention (Barros et al, 2019) However, in terms of performance, while knowledge workers perceive exercise breaks as beneficial to their task performance Park et al, 2017), studies that use objective performance measures show mixed findings. Only one study reported a significant effect of exercise breaks on an objective measure of task performance (Henning et al, 1997); most studies showed mixed results, with some task performance measures improving (e.g., see Study 2 in Henning et al, 1997) and others remaining unchanged after the intervention (e.g., Blake et al, 2019;Carr et al, 2016).…”

“…2 A split shift break typically refers to a schedule in which employees work for a certain number of hours in the morning (e.g., 5 hours), have an extended lunch break (e.g., 2 hours), and then work for additional hours (e.g., 3 hours) in the afternoon/evening. potential to improve an array of physical well-being indicators, such as shoulder strength (Barros et al, 2019;Ren et al, 2019), increased physical activity (Brown et al, 2014;Carr et al, 2016;Michishita, Jiang, Ariyoshi, Yoshida, Moriyama, Obata, et al, 2017;Taylor et al, 2016), reduced pain (Irmak et al, 2012;Lacaze et al, 2010;Park et al, 2017), reduced discomfort (Galinsky et al, 2007;Henning et al, 1997;Lacaze et al, 2010), and reduced sedentary time (Taylor et al, 2016). However, the positive effects of exercise breaks on physical well-being are maintained during a limited time range and may disappear within 24 weeks after the intervention (Barros et al, 2019), pointing to the need to regularly engage in exercise breaks to continue seeing benefits.…”

Home-based exercises during the COVID-19 quarantine situation for office workers: A commentary

“…Resistance training could include doing things such as squats using your body weight, push-ups against the wall, sit to stand exercises, single leg step-ups on stairs, and also shoulder lateral raises using bottles of water as resistance. Aerobic exercises could include dancing, jumping rope, use of a cardio machine, or walking around the house [8,9].…”

Looking back and looking forward

“…Surprising was that there were no differences between different adherence groups in neck or shoulder pain. Productivity was not affected despite the 15 min break in workflow [2]. I think we can learn a lot from this study.…”