At 42.3 hours per week, the British office workers labour the longest in Europe, so making sure you’re sitting in the right office chair is important. But don’t just think about comfort, says Stephen Bowden, a chartered ergonomist at consultancy Morgan Maxwell: sitting incorrectly puts pressure on muscles and joints that cause lasting pain. “Musculoskeletal issues are one of the biggest costs for British businesses, right up there with stress and depression,” he says.
There are four key areas to ensure that office life doesn’t negatively affect your health. One, you need good lumbar support. “You want a little bit of curve in the backrest, but not too much,” says Bowden. Two, adjustable arms. Three, a moveable seat pan (the bit you sit on). “If you’re a small user, on some chairs you can’t sit all the way to the backrest,” says Bowden.
Number four? Now you have your fancy chair, leave it. “Simply standing up every 45 minutes is the best thing you can do,” adds Bowden.
When choosing the best chair, choose one that allows for movement and supports you across a range of working postures, from reclining to leaning forward to focus on the work surface in front. Posture is a critical factor, says Jack Callaghan, Canada research chair in spine biomechanics and injury prevention and a professor at the department of kinesiology at the University of Waterloo.
Good support for the low back is an important consideration, as well as the seat pan allowing some rotation of the pelvis, he adds, as the pelvis rotating can directly alter the lumbar spine position. “When we sit, our pelvis naturally rotates backwards, and this causes the lumbar spine to flex. If we can open the hips, this accommodates less posterior rotation of the pelvis and allows for the lumbar spine to return to a more neutral position,” says Callaghan.
Movement is a key factor here, he stresses. “I try very hard to convey – and alter people’s beliefs – that there is one chair setting that is best and a “best” posture. Sitting in a “best” posture may initially have a good spine alignment but without movement this process is impaired.”
So what chairs are there for you to choose from? Herman Miller has recently unveiled its Cosm chair, designed by Berlin-based Studio 7.5. The company says the chair is aimed at giving the user – any user – the best possible sitting experience. “We observed that people don’t always have one desk they sit at all day, every day,” says Herman Miller's portfolio lead Mike Rowen. “So a chair that needs adjusting for each person who sits in it isn’t always suitable.” So Miller decided to design a chair that requires almost no adjustment, but is still comfortable.
At some £900, it's a pricey product. Each chair is manufactured to order, says Rowen, and takes about a month to make. In terms of development, however, the process can take years; the idea of the automatic tilt in Cosm, for instance, began when Studio 7.5 began working on its previous product, the Mirra chair – but the tilt technology wasn’t ready yet. So it took a while to actually design the first prototype.
Cosm is “designed with the body in mind,” says Rowen. The intercept suspension is supposed to reduce the space between the backrest and seat pan, so you’re not stressing your lumbar spine, the lightweight frame and mesh backing make it super slick. Callaghan says that the chair, in its attempt to try to remove the complexity of adjustments and encourage movement is a very positive direction, addressing his concern about fixed postures.
So what else is out there?
The 4ME task chair, designed by Martin Ballendat, has its own modernist design quirks – and includes an active seating mechanism that's supposed to work out your core muscles such as your diaphragm and pelvic floor.
The Knoll Life work chair from famed brand Knoll is a sleek, high-tech take on the traditional office chair. The meshed seat pan is shaped to alleviate key pressure points in the legs. And Callaghan recommends CoreChair, which has a surface that allows free rotation about all three axes when seated. But, he adds, there haven't been enough studies on how people respond to this free movement and impact on low back pain.
If you don't want to invest in chairs, it's always possible to buy a cushion to improve your sitting experience. For example, Sissel SitFit cushion is aimed at helping users build back musculature as well as strengthen the pelvic floor. The cushion’s ever-changing shape is supposed to ensure core muscles keep moving, improving posture.
People with neck, back or leg pain can benefit from alternating with sitting, says David Rempel, a professor of medicine at the University of California. But benefits of sit-stand desks are overhyped, he adds, and standing won't make you more active.
Callaghan, though, says that sit-stand desks are very good at changing spine postures, reducing low back pain. Switching to standing all day instead of sitting is not a good idea, though, he adds. “Many people get a desk, have no training, proceed to stand for a long period of time, develop pain and stop using the sit-stand desk. I recommend not standing for more than 15 minutes at a time – especially for new adopters, with a maximum of 40 minutes per bout after accommodation and no more than four hours per eight hour workday.”
Or you may decide to ditch the chair entirely and opt for an exercise ball: its shifting surface is meant to engage users’ core abdominal and back muscles as they strain to maintain balance. But Callaghan warns that “they are good for increasing the chance of falling.” And, he adds, his studies looking at a ball versus a chair show that there is no difference in postures or muscle usage, but discomfort is higher when seating on a stability ball. Backrests are also important for reducing the forces on the lower back, discouraging slouching.
Still – there's always an excuse to move the ball away from the desk and do a few bounces up and down if a gym visit doesn't fit in your schedule.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
