Like many people that sit at a desk all day doing computer work, I have bad posture. Currently, I’ve rolled up a sweater and placed it behind my lower back. It seems to be helping. A co-worker gave me arm rests to attach to my desk. They’re for carpel tunnel but she said they help with posture too. We’ll see.
Any suggestions?
Pick a few tips, incorporate them into your work space, using timers and reminders if necessary, until those become automatic. Then pick out a few more and incorporate them into your work life. Repeat.
IME, cheap office chairs are the kiss of death. Desk chairs are one of those things where you get (or don’t get) what you pay for. Practice good posture at home too-don’t ruin over the weekend what you worked hard to improve during the week.
Use your chair’s backrest to… well, to rest your back. When typing, keep your feet on the floor and your wrists on the desktop. Those little “feet” on your keyboard help keep your wrists down. Of course, that would apply to proper typing skills and not to the “hunt-and-peck” method.
When standing and walking, hold your back straight and your head high. Rather than holding them rigidly, what you want is to stretch them out, alleviating the built-up tension. Also, imagine a vertical plane in which your hips are slightly ahead of your shoulders. You’ll probably want to do these things in front of a mirror first, just for your own peace of mind, because they’ll probably feel unnatural and might actually look ridiculous (prancing, stick up your ass, etc.) So, if it doesn’t look weird, give it a shot.
I think these are good suggestions for poor posture caused by insecurity, shyness, etc. If there’s something wrong with your back or you really are oddly built, you should probably talk to a health professional.
There is really no way to have “good posture” in a seated position. The reason you tend to lean forward, hunch over, or lean to one side is because of the difficulty of maintaining an upright posture with the rectus abdominis unengaged as is natural when the gluteus and pelvic floor are relaxed. Unless you sit with your ass permanently clinched, you are basically stacking the weight of your upper torso directly onto the spine only supported by the transversus abdominis and the abdominal obliques, and if you note, the spine is not a vertical column. Putting a cushion behind your lower back ‘helps’ by forcing your upper torso more upright but is just masking the actual problem. Good quality office chairs can help mitigate some of the worst by providing more adjustability but the fundamental problem is that the human body is not evolved at all to sit in chairs, and certainly not for many hours per day, and the most expensive Steelcase chair isn’t going to fix that.
The real solution is to stand up regularly and walk around (at least 2-3 times an hour, at least five minutes at a time) and do regular exercises to strengthen the abdominis and pelvic mucles, e.q. bodyweight squats, kegels (yes, for men as well as women) and various bodyweight movements such as bear crawls, frog hops, and handstand pushups, or kettlebell/sandbag/club swinging and pressing exercises. A standing desk with a foot support or fidget bar also helps mitigate but it is difficult to stand in position comfortably for more than about half an hour, so being able to transition from sitting to standing as required is beneficial.
Stranger
Get up and stand or walk around as much as possible. There are stand-up desks that some people use, but I wouldn’t be able to. When you get home, carve out time to do some yoga or stretching exercises, or just go on a long walk and stretch out your back muscles.
Posture straps help. I used one at the recommendation of my physiotherapist when I had a frozen shoulder. Cheap and easy to use.
Well, that will work if your goal is to ultimately aggravate lower back pain. It is not a long term solution to the problem, and in fact physiologists caution against wearing those for more than a few days because they induce adverse compensations
The problem, again, is the inability to keep the anterior core muscles engaged in the seated position without conscious attention. The solution is to spend less time sitting, and more time moving and doing exercises to strengthen the those muscles to compensate for the time spent in a seated position.
Stranger