One of the things I have been working on lately is my first official iOS app, Desk Jockey Workout. It’s a straightforward app that aims to fix issues caused by prolonged sitting.

Sitting causes many issues with your body, including muscular imbalances surrounding the hips. Increased imbalance, with the anterior muscles becoming stronger than the posterior, can then cause Anterior Pelvic Tilt (APT).

APT is simply the pelvis rotating forwards and down. If you imagine how the spine is attached to the pelvis, you can see that the pelvis rotating forwards can cause the lower back to curve. This is just one symptom.

Other symptoms of APT could be knee pain, hip pain, and chances are, if you do have APT, you have other issues too. Perhaps you have pain in the hip when walking, or over-pronation in one or both of your feet.

What has happened is that your body has compensated for the imbalances by using other muscles to take up the slack of the weaker/inhibited ones. For example, your lower back is now doing much of the work that the glutes are meant to be doing. It was never designed for that! Your glutes are incredibly powerful and are designed for a specific purpose - a purpose that the lower back isn’t really for.

Other issues are tight/short rectus femoris muscles, hip flexors, and back extensors, along with weak abdominals, hamstrings, and as previously mentioned, glutes.

Desk Jockey Workout provides a short plan that can be completed every day in order to reverse these effects. As a developer, I’m sitting at my desk for many hours per day. I’m also ashamed to admit that I don’t take nearly enough breaks. But for the past few months I have been doing these exercises myself, and they have helped incredibly. I have dislocated my knee in the past due to poor hip mechanics (lack of hip external rotation and weak glutes, if you must know) and I can already feel the whole area being much improved. Since it has been so helpful, I figured it would make a perfect “first app”.