This type of exercise is surprisingly good at lowering blood pressure

Résumé détaillé

If it feels like current events are conspiring to raise your blood pressure, now might be a good time to go sit against a wall for a few minutes. In a new study, several minutes…

Wall squats are a low-effort way to lower blood pressure. Photo / Getty Images

If it feels like current events are conspiring to raise your blood pressure, now might be a good time to go sit against a wall for a few minutes.

In a new study, several minutes of wall sits – also called wall squats – three times a week effectively lowered people’s blood pressures over time. Those gains lingered even if people cut back to doing only a few wall sits once or twice a week.

The findings add to existing evidence that wall sitting may “reduce blood pressure more than other forms of exercise,”, said Jonathan Wiles, a professor of exercise science at Canterbury Christ Church University in England, who oversaw the new study.

The time commitment may be much smaller than you’d expect, and starting with a very shallow sit – just bending your legs a bit – can be an effective way to begin.

Even people “who struggle to find the time and motivations to exercise” might be able to gain and hold on to the pressure-lowering benefits of wall squats, Wiles said.

To do a wall squat, find an unadorned wall, lean against it and walk your feet out as you slide down the wall until your thighs are as close to parallel with the ground as feels comfortable.

Few of the study participants sat deeply, at first. For most, their knees were “not at 90-degree angles,” Wiles said. They sat, instead, at whatever depth they could maintain.

Wall squats involve isometric contractions, meaning that during the exercise, your muscles, held in one position, tighten and generate force, but don’t lengthen or shorten. (Muscles shorten during concentric contractions, such as raising a dumbbell, and lengthen during eccentric ones, like lowering that dumbbell again.)

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