We spend a lot of time during the week at our desks. Poor desk set up can often be the cause of our general aches and pains. How often do you find after a long day at your desk, you get up and feel sore / stiff through your back and neck? How much do you think that to get your desk set up properly requires loads of expensive tests and equipment? The good news is that it can be relatively easy to make the right changes get your desk comfy and not giving you grief. Here are our 3 top tips to look out for:
- Chair posture – This one is overlooked as the biomechanics of our lower and necks can sometimes be mis understood. When we are sitting on our desk chairs we try sit as straight as we can and right on our bottoms. How could you go wrong? The key thing is how to spread the load. What I mean by this is when you are sitting, where is the pressure from your body weight centred? Generally, I see it on our ischial tuberosity’s. The key is to distribute the pressure by sitting on your legs/ hamstring area. If the pressure is directly on your bum bones, then you will find if will fatigue your pelvis and cause back aches. The way to do this is to slide your bottom all the way to back of the chair so you have pressure right across and then to make the front half of the seat slightly lower than the back half. This creates even less pressure on your back side.
- Keep things close – Another simple but important step is to not constantly be reaching for things like your key board or your mouse. If you’re constantly trying to reach for commonly used equipment you will find that you start to lose your upright posture and begin leaning across to reach your mouse or even your keyboard (that is if you have one of those corner stations where the keyboard isn’t quiet under your monitor). The tip here is to be able to reach equipment whilst elbows are comfortably tucked in.
- Monitor at eye height – To keep your neck from hanging forward and developing neck stiffness. The monitor should always be level with your eyes. Never create a set up that causes you to be looking down on it or up at it.
These are our 3 quick tip’s that don’t cost anything and are really easy to do!
Tips:
- Sit back in your chair to distribute the weight onto your hamstrings
- Keep your computer set up compact
- Leave your monitor height at eye height
Quotes:
- We spend a lot of time during the week at our desks
- Good desk set up is not as expensive as you think
- Spread your sitting load.
