Offices can be gloomy, dark, cold, and pretty much all round mood sapping. Sitting at the desk all day staring into a computer screen and working through the piles of paper work that seem to never reduce in quantity. You can experience stiffness, stress, blurry vision, hunger and a serious case of exhaustion all before lunch

Below I’m going to outline the 5 main steps to implement into your daily routine to reduce these annoying factors that we experience on a daily basis in the workplace. Try them out and see the difference that small changes can make to your day.

• Morning Mobility

Get up and move in the morning! Some upper and lower body mobility will warm your body, wake you up quickly and limber you up for the day ahead. Alternating from a lower body exercise to an upper body exercise will give you that warm up effect, slightly elevated heart rate and an increased blood flow around the body. Especially good for the cold mornings ahead. The bit of strategic movement early in the day will also loosen muscles of any tightness from previous day sessions and prevent the body stiffening further throughout the day at the desk. Here;s a quick vid I did at home. Four different exercises including the full body, do 10 reps each and 3/4 rounds in total. This will have you warmed up nicely before leaving the house and if done correctly will give you a bit of a workout effect which boosts your mood ten fold.

• Timed Targets

Set yourself a time frame to get a certain amount of work done. You’ll find you’ll actually get more work done throughout the course of the day, you’ll see yourself get ahead of the workload for a change. So every 30-40 minutes or whatever time frame you want to set (just make sure its often enough), get up from the desk, go for a walk to the toilet, the coffee machine, the filtered water feed. Maybe go and share a joke or a brief chat with a colleague. Killing 2 birds with the one stone. Timed targets means you work quicker and more efficiently. Regular office walks will stretch the legs and reduce stiffness.

• Hydrate At The Desk

Have a beaker of water religiously at your desk. For most of us, we just don’t drink enough water. Keeping hydrated throughout the day is important for a regular gym goer who needs to go train after hours. Also it’s a great way to keep off the hunger cravings, load up on water at the desk and not only will you keep hunger pangs at bay but you’ll have an excuse to get up after every timed target for a trip to the toilet.

• Increase The Fat

Start the day off with some healthy fats and protein as opposed to carbohydrates. A morning of eggs,bacon and a handful of nuts will leave you substantially more satisfied than your regular toast, cereal, bagel and the likes. Not only do we get more energy (kcals) from healthy fats but they will leave you satisfied for that bit longer and won’t give you that horrible mid morning slump! Carbs in the AM will spike blood glucose (sugar) levels which in turn triggers insulin (storage hormone). Insulin is a no no so we need to do our best to keep it at a steady state throughout the day. After the immediate spike in blood glucose, it drops just as quick and somewhat even lower than what it was. This is when we get that mid morning slump for a snack or coffee. So to sum up, kick the carbs out of the kitchen and grab the bag of nuts instead.

• Session Plan

Arrange to train with a buddy in the gym on a regular basis. Or if you prefer to train alone then lets say the dumbbells are your buddy . So make sure you’ve the gear bag with you and the plan is to head straight to the gym after work. Plan out your session the night before therefore you’ll have the workout in your head or written down and nothings going to stop you getting to the gym after work. This means you’ll work that bit quicker throughout the day to get the projects done so that when it hits the clock-off hour, you’re out that door like the road runner!