Salvation From Sitting

Word is out, sitting is the new smoking when it comes to health, though standing in place of sitting doesn't help much. However, the researchers who did the latest study on this don't strike me as physical rehabilitation experts. My favorite fitness guru on Youtube however has something to say about exactly what sitting does to decrease your mobility (and thus kill you):

"Anterior pelvic tilt" explains a lot. His remedy is building the glutes (butt) and abs (stomach.) How should we do that? I choose my exercises based on the following principles:

1. Ergonomics: low risk of injury. I especially like exercises that give good results with less reps, as I am concerned about repetitive stress injury on a number of my major joints.
2. Fool proof: the exercise should give good results even when not executed at the full range the fitness instructor on the video demonstrates.
3. Self-defense application: if it doesn't help me in sparring, I don't have time for it.
4. Efficiency: I want to work the maximum number of muscle groups with the least number of exercises, because exercises take away from sparring time.

Let's start from the ground up, with the glutes. I like squats for these because it is pretty easy to follow the instructions and not hurt yourself (1,) and squats give good results even when your squat depth is not great (2.) It's always helpful in a fight to be able to suddenly get lower than your opponent (in knife fighting it helps you target the back and inside of the legs, 3,) and squats also work most of the other muscle mass in your legs (4):

Abs are the other part of the solution to the Anterior Pelvic Tilt problem. I have a problem with most of the ab exercises out there (sit-up variations) because they violate all 4 of my exercise principles. But then comes the plank. A good basic front plank is simple to get right (1,) and is time based so adapts to the challenge level of where your abs are at (2.) It is a great exercise for practicing keeping your hands up while your body is under stress (3,) and unlike most ab exercises it works your entire abdominal wall (plus a bunch of other important muscles, 4):

The other problem caused by a sedentary lifestyle is a general weakness of the upper body, which limits our mobility as we get older. Good old-fashioned (Word War 2 era, probably done by Yoga Gurus for millennia, staple of traditional martial arts) Dive Bombers meet my criteria. Dive Bombers are pretty hard to hurt yourself doing (1) and give results even when done with less than ideal range of motion (2.) They have direct applications to grappling (sprawling and side control, 3,) and work most of the big muscle groups in your upper body (4):

To be clear I am no expert on fitness or medicine. It is my uneducated hypothesis that these are the exercises that will most efficiently save you from sitting on your ass 12+ hours a day. (I recently added these to my daily Tai Chi workouts and few visits a week to the MMA gym.)