Progress requires Revival
The revival is your posture. More importantly, it’s a revival of your awareness of you in space and time. Too many people are lacking that awareness. In some sense, everyone is; however, you can break this pattern and create a stability that adds to and does not assist any degeneration process your body may be going through. It has become a big part of the conversation at Cornerstone lately, so let’s dive in. Some of this information has been shared before. How are you doing applying this information on a daily basis? Some of this information is new. If you have not been keenly aware, you need to be.
Ok, so lets start with this premise: Sitting at work is not inherently a bad thing, as long as great posture is maintained, and some semblance of movement is possible. In the opposite sense, being sedentary in life is a bad thing, and sitting for too long at work can contribute to that. In fact, research in the IJHS found that 80% of study participants reported some sort of pain or injury complaint from sitting in the work place.
The biggest culprit, was staying for too long in static positions, followed closely by poor ergonomics. So lets start with some basic desk/computer ergonomics:
Working from the bottom up, your chair should be positioned at a distance of being an arms length away from your computer monitor, to help reduce eye strain.
Your knees should be about the same level as your hips, so you might need to change your chair height to make them match.
Regarding your hips, you want to sit upright in the chair, and not be hunched forward. Back supports should not be needed, as they only hinder movement in the long run. If you really want to use a support, its best to use one that is easily removable so that after 10-15 min you can remove it and adapt to a new pattern!
Your elbows and shoulders should be relaxed, with your elbows resting around 90 deg.
Wrists should be held in the neutral position, keeping your hands at or slightly below the level of your elbows.
Your eyes should be able to look straight ahead at the top of your computer monitor as your sitting in an upright position. This is typically the first and easiest change many of you can make to have better ergonomics!
Your head should be balanced over your spine.
Adding a Hint of Performance to Your Progress
This does not just relate to work. It relates to your position as you read this newsletter right now. Proper posture sets the stage for a future movement. For example, are you unsure how to start an exercise at the gym? Minus using a keyboard at a computer, assuming the above posture for any seated exercise is a great place to start an exercise from. If you need to stand, you want your body to be in a braced position. That means put yourself in a position where your feet, glutes, and abdominal muscles can be engaged act the same time. You will find you must be in a strong starting position to achieve this!
To take it up a notch: try this while going from siting to standing and vice-a-versa. Take a broom stick or meter stick and hold it from your tail bone to the back of your head. Sit, or stand, and keep the stick firmly against your tailbone, touching your spine between your shoulder blades, and touching the back of your head. If you can accomplish this, you are safe to move! On the flip side, how many times are you switching between these two positions everyday without keeping these simple biomechanics connections?? Potentially hundreds of times.
As chiropractors, it gets talked about all the time: “change your pattern to instill a positive behavior that will keep your nervous system from changing any of its signals.” Implementing simple steps and being aware of how your body moves (or when it’s not moving) can make all the difference in how you “hold” your neural pattern, ie how long before your body starts to breakdown because of the negative forces YOU are repeatedly forcing your body to perform. If this strikes a chord with you, good! The goal is to make you your own doctor, to force you to be in charge of you own health!