Transcription
Legs, lower back, shoulders, and head. How are you supposed to position all these in relation to your desk and equipment?
Well, someone has probably told you that this is the right way to sit. But what if I told you that this position is not ergonomic and that it's reasonable you are unable to maintain this position for a long time?
A truly ergonomic position is the one that you can easily stay in for long hours with the minimum effort. And this is what I'm going to share with you here in this video.
To get everyone on the same page, we need to agree on what the optimal sitting posture is. For this purpose, we mainly aim for the least stressful position for our joints that is easy to hold for the longest amount of time. Easy, right?
In medicine, this safe state for the joints is described as neutral position. The neutral position of the spine is characterized by the three natural curves in the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical spine, and the shoulders in line with the ears. So, let's see how you can achieve that alignment while sitting with as little effort as possible.
Let's break down ergonomic posture into three areas: legs and lower back, arms and thorax, and head and neck.
So, why is the position of the legs here not optimal? That's because the farther the legs move forward, the more the center of your gravity moves forward too. To balance this, you need to activate your lower back muscles, which eventually get tired, and you fall back. On the other hand, if you already touch your back to the chair with the legs on the same 90-degree position, it would be impossible to not slide to the front eventually and care of your back.
To achieve perfect alignment, you need to bring your feet below your hips. This moves the center of your mass back to the vertical axis that bisects your body. The lumbar spine is fixed to its neutral position, and there are no forces pushing you forward or backward. This way, it wouldn't feel natural to fall back from this position like it does in the 90-degree in each position.
A pro tip for those that want to make it even easier to maintain this position for long time is to support your abdominals on the desk and move the legs slightly more back. So you create a small amount of force that will push your torso forward. This stabilizes your core with almost no effort. I personally like to change positions from standing to leaning slightly forward to rest on the desk. Both of these keep my spine in neutral position.
Many chairs, however, force you into specific positions that don't fit all body types. For the past months, I have been testing a different solution that I'm very excited about. It's a chair based on Scandinavian ergonomic models that was initially designed to allow movement on the pelvic region while sitting. Due to the option of keeping the legs on the sides and the saddle seat, I found it extremely convenient to stay in posture for long hours, alternate my position, and move. Of course, you can probably use any type of swinging chair that allows your legs to stay on the sides, but I'm very satisfied with this one, so I'll put it on a link below if you want to check it out.
Moving up to the arms and thorax. Why is a position like this not optimal? That's because for every centimeter that your elbows go beyond 90 degrees, your shoulders need more and more effort to keep neutral position. If you reach for your equipment, no matter how hard you try, you will eventually round your shoulders in to assist the movement of your arms. So, the position of your keyboard or the equipment that you use directly affects the position of the elbows, shoulders, and thoracic spine.
Remember that you need a setup that will almost force you into a neutral position. This setup is with a keyboard so close to your body that your elbows are forced to stay at 90 degrees. This automatically forces the shoulders and thoracic spine into a neutral position. It would be impossible to move the elbows elsewhere since your work is on the keyboard. Also, it would be rather uncomfortable to round your shoulders in back because this would directly impair the use of the keyboard. So, excessive distance between you and your equipment forces you to reach further and round in. Proper distance promotes you to neutral position.
The last step is about the neck and head, and this is one of the simplest tips you will ever hear. The only way to keep your head and neck in neutral position is for the top of your screen to be in line with your eyes. Nothing else will work. A lower position will lead you to long hours of bending the neck, and for most people, this leads to pain and discomfort. If your screen doesn't have this option, use a pile of books like I do. Trust me, this last step is king. It's almost impossible to bend the head to the front since the thing that I'm working on is right in front of me. This forces me into a neutral cervical spine.
Combining all these tapes into a setup will help you to keep neutral posture for most of the time. This doesn't mean, however, that you won't find a way to cheat. It only means that with this setup, you'll need less effort to keep a neutral posture.
Also, an extremely important point that I want to make here is that no posture is good for all day long. Our bodies are designed to move. In addition, almost no position is harmful for a small amount of time, not even this. You just need a safe and stress-free position to spend most of your time, like the one we just saw, and then alter it with small breaks of movement or other positions that might feel comfortable for some minutes or so.
So, that was the video. I really hope that you practice these steps, and if you do, tell us about your experience in the comments. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all next time.