Too hot to move? The real risk is staying still

"It's too hot to work out." It's the sentence I hear most often in the clinic these July days. And I get it: in this heat, the idea of sweating at the gym or going out for a run kills the motivation before you even start. The problem is the conclusion we draw from it, almost always without realising: if I can't train properly, then I might as well stay still. Sofa, chair, car, chair again. And the next day, right on cue, comes that stiff neck, or that back that "locked up" for no real reason.

Here's the point I want to get across: the heat doesn't stiffen you. What stiffens you is staying still. And the good news is that the solution isn't a heroic hour-long workout, but something much smaller and more sustainable.

A still body is not a resting body

There's a culturally ingrained idea that sitting is a form of rest. From the tissues' point of view, it isn't at all. When we stay in the same position for hours, the postural muscles of the neck and lower back work in prolonged static contraction, local circulation slows, and the intervertebral discs progressively lose hydration under a constant load. You know the result: that "rusty" feeling when you finally stand up.

It's not just a feeling. A 2025 systematic review with meta-analysis, pooling 25 studies and over 43,000 people, found that sedentary behaviour is a concrete risk factor for neck pain, with a risk that grows as sitting time increases — especially beyond 4 hours a day [1]. It's a finding I invite you to read honestly: we're talking about association, not a single cause. Neck pain is multifactorial (sleep, stress, workload and personal history all matter a great deal). But the direction is clear and recurrent in the literature, and in my daily clinical experience I confirm it constantly.

The dose that works is "little and often"

Here comes the part I like best, because it flips the guilt many patients get stuck in. You don't need to make up for eight hours in a chair with a punishing workout. You need to interrupt those hours.

In 2020 the World Health Organization updated its guidelines on physical activity, and for the first time included an explicit recommendation to reduce sedentary time, replacing it with activity of any intensity. The message they chose became a slogan I often repeat: every move counts [2]. Even the old "minimum 10 minutes" threshold is gone: micro-movements too, when added up, count.

And does it really work? A randomised controlled trial on high-risk office workers tested exactly this: introducing regular active breaks and small postural shifts during the sitting day. Over six months, new episodes of neck pain appeared in 17% of those doing the active breaks versus 44% of the control group; for low-back pain it went from 33% to about 7-9% [3]. These are numbers that deserve caution — it's a specific work setting and the participants were already selected as "at risk" — but the protective effect is clear and consistent with the rest of the literature.

"Movement snacks"

That's what I like to call them with my patients: movement snacks. Just as you wouldn't wait until you're faint with hunger to eat, you shouldn't wait for the lock-up to move. A systematic review of so-called active micro-breaks — 2-3 minutes of light activity roughly every half hour of sedentary work — observed a reduction in musculoskeletal discomfort and fatigue, with no negative impact on productivity [4]. Translated: standing up to drink a glass of water, doing a couple of neck rotations, stretching your back between one email and the next doesn't lose you time. It gives it back.

As a kinesiologist, even before an osteopath, let me add a clarification I hold dear: variety matters more than intensity. Tissue loves changing position. There's no "perfect" posture to hold for hours; there's the next posture. Stiffness comes from postural monotony, not from a single wrong position.

And here it's worth distinguishing, as I always do in class with my students: stability and strength are not the same thing. You can be a strong person and still have a neck that stiffens, because stability is the ability to control and vary movement over time, not to produce peaks of power. Movement snacks train exactly this: the body's ability to stay in relationship with change.

The heat as an ally, not an excuse

Let me come back to where we started. The heat is a legitimate reason to change the type of movement — shift it to the cooler hours, choose it light, do it in the shade or indoors — not to eliminate it. In fact, summer is the perfect time to build the most precious habit: short, daily, low-threshold micro-routines that stay even when autumn returns and the gym's good intentions have already melted away.

It's exactly the logic I built "Otto per te" on: eight minutes a day, guided, to loosen neck and back without having to organise your life around it. Not because eight minutes are magic, but because they're few enough not to make you give up and frequent enough to make a difference. The first week is free, if you want to try https://app.8perte.com/

But even if you never downloaded any app, the one message I want to stay with you is this: when you think "it's too hot to move", your neck and your back are thinking the exact opposite. Listen to them. Stand up, now, and have your first movement snack.

Woman stretching her arms at her desk during a break from sitting work

[1] Meng Y, Xue Y, Yang S, Wu F, Dong Y. The associations between sedentary behavior and neck pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Public Health. 2025;25(1):453. doi:10.1186/s12889-025-21685-9 (PMID: 39905389)

[2] Bull FC, Al-Ansari SS, Biddle S, et al. World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Br J Sports Med. 2020;54(24):1451-1462. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2020-102955 (PMID: 33239350)

[3] Waongenngarm P, van der Beek AJ, Akkarakittichoke N, Janwantanakul P. Effects of an active break and postural shift intervention on preventing neck and low-back pain among high-risk office workers: a 3-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2021;47(4):306-317. doi:10.5271/sjweh.3949 (PMID: 33906239)

[4] Radwan A, Barnes L, DeResh R, Englund C, Gribanoff S. Effects of active microbreaks on the physical and mental well-being of office workers: A systematic review. Cogent Engineering. 2022;9(1):2026206. doi:10.1080/23311916.2022.2026206