President Obama's Ergonomic Chair

Even presidents need good ergonomics.

Behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, President Obama rests his backside on a Concorde Executive 24 Hour Chair. The Concorde distinguishes itself with arm-mounted push-button controls. Press once and the chair floats free. Press again, and the chair locks into place. No need to reach down and fumble with levers while trying to get the position just right. It also comes equipped with a high back and head support for reclining. Though we would prefer to see a less aggressive forward angle on the head support to allow for a more neutral head position. Kneeling chairs are an easy way to sit correctly and align your spine properly. More about what office chairs I recommend: http://bodycorrectliving.com.

If you want to complete your own presidential setup, replicas of the Resolute Desk can even be had from The History Company of Ithaca, New York.

Alexander Technique: Back Lengthening and Widening Exercise

Public Seating can be a painful challenge as it's rarely designed well. As good as our own personal ergonomic setups may be and as much as we try to be aware of and maintain good posture, sometimes life puts us in situations where it's simply not possible to maintain comfortable proper alignment. I've just spent five long days in hotel conference rooms , and they were back breakers.

An active rest exercise from Alexander Technique gives us a good way to relax and counteract the damage to our spines. All you need to do it is some empty, firm floor space. Do not perform this exercise on a cushioned surface like your bed. I also recommed that you get a thin pillow (no more than 2″ thick) to place under your head as the back of your head is generally slightly forward of the back of your back when you are in good posture, however, you can still do this exercise without a pillow.

1. Lie down on the floor, face up and head on your pillow if you are using one.
2. Bend your legs to about 90 degrees by raising your knees and bringing your heels closer to your bottom. Make sure to keep your knees and ankles in-line with each other and feet flat on the floor. In this position you should feel that your knees point easily toward the sky without requiring any overt effort to keep them from splaying outwards or inwards. Hint: repositioning your feet slightly inwards or outwards can help with balance.
3. Bend your elbows and place your hands on either side of your stomach. Keep a straight line from elbows to fingertips and do not allow your wrists to bend.
4. Now breath and feel each muscle in your body relax.
5. Once you are good and relaxed pay extra special attention to the feeling of your back lengthening from tailbone to head and widening from shoulder to shoulder.

You can do this exercise for as short or as long as you like, but 10-15 minutes is good benchmark.

Even if you aren’t feeling any stiffness or tension along your back and neck, this is a great exercise to do often. Gravity compresses our spines throughout the day, and this exercise helps unwind them. Doing this exercise for 10-15 minutes mid day will help you recharge and finish the day strong.

Lisa Simpson’s Kneeling Chair

Avid fans of America’s favorite cartoon family, the Simpsons, may have noticed that Lisa has a Variable Balans kneeling chair (click to see the original) in her room.
Kneeling chairs, while odd looking, are some of the most ergonomically sound chairs to be had. They open up your hip angle from the standard 90 degrees of a regular chair to the preferred 130 degrees that is natural to your body. Opening your hip angle naturally restores the curve in your lower back without the need for lumbar support. In fact, kneeling chairs make sitting upright so easy you barely notice the absence of a chair back.

Many kneeling chairs have been made over the years, but the Variable Balans is the original kneeling chair design by Peter Opsvik. It is a fantastic chair. In fact, I use one in my home office. The actual Variable Balans chair is slightly different from the pictured reproduction–it has two separate knee pads. The only caveat to this particular chair is that people with shorter legs may tend to find themselves slipping too low on the seat for comfort.
Even more so for kneeling chairs, it’s important that the rest of your desk space is set up properly for good ergonomics. Low monitors and keyboards/mice at the wrong height cause you to slump in the chair which can be particularly hard on your neck and shoulders. Get your monitor, keyboard, and mouse at the right height and a kneeling chair may be the best chair that you ever own.

Why Lumbar Support Not Only Doesn’t Work, But Can’t Work

The ergonomist’s standard approach to curing low back pain is to recommend a chair with lumbar support to restore the arch in your lower back. While it is true that we want to maintain the arch in our lower back, the problem with this advice is that it doesn’t work! We lose the arch in our lower back when we sit for a reason, and unless we fix the underlying cause we cannot restore the lumbar curve without causing potential damage to connective tissues in the low back.
The fundamental flaw of the standard, non-ergonomic chair is the 90 degree hip angle it forces you into. The hip-joint is only capable of bending to about 60 degrees.  In order to lift your thighs up the extra 30 degrees into a right-angled sitting position you are forced to rotate your pelvis backwards and flatten out your lower back. Lumbar support cannot fix this. It just winds up creating extra pulling forces on the connective tissue around your tailbone. In order to remedy the situation and restore the curve in our lower back, we need to open our torso to thigh angle back up.
I recommend chairs that have adjustable seat tilt and seat pan depth to help protect the lower back by allowing you to drop your thighs down and rotate your pelvis back forward to its natural position. Browse our recommended ergonomic chairs to restore your body today.
Varier Furniture is the pioneer in open body angle seating, based on the work of legendary designer, Peter Opsvik and Hans Chr. Mengshoel.

Alexander Technique: Back Lengthening and Widening Exercise

Public seating can be a painful challenge as it’s rarely designed well. As good as our own personal ergonomic setups may be and as much as we try to be aware of and maintain good posture, sometimes life puts us in situations where it’s simply not possible to maintain comfortable, proper alignment. I just spent five long days in hotel conference chairs, and they were back breakers.
An active rest exercise from Alexander Technique gives us a good way to relax and counteract the damage to our spines. All you need to do it is some empty, firm floor space. Do not perform this exercise on a cushioned surface like your bed. I also recommend that you get a thin pillow (no more than 2″ thick) to place under your head as the back of your head is generally slightly forward of the back of your back when you are in good posture, however, you can still do this exercise without a pillow.

1. Lie down on the floor, face up and head on your pillow if you are using one.
2. Bend your legs to about 90 degrees by raising your knees and bringing your heels closer to your bottom. Make sure to keep your knees and ankles in-line with each other and feet flat on the floor. In this position you should feel that your knees point easily toward the sky without requiring any overt effort to keep them from splaying outwards or inwards. Hint: repositioning your feet slightly inwards or outwards can help with balance.
3. Bend your elbows and place your hands on either side of your stomach. Keep a straight line from elbows to fingertips and do not allow your wrists to bend.
4. Now breath and feel each muscle in your body relax.
5. Once you are good and relaxed pay extra special attention to the feeling of your back lengthening from tailbone to head and widening from shoulder to shoulder.

You can do this exercise for as short or as long as you like, but 10-15 minutes is good benchmark.
Even if you aren’t feeling any stiffness or tension along your back and neck, this is a great exercise to do often. Gravity compresses our spines throughout the day, and this exercise helps unwind them. Doing this exercise for 10-15 minutes mid day will help you recharge and finish the day strong.

Are your armrests too high?

Many of us have our chair arms set high up into our armpits. Having your arm rests set too high can lead to stiff shoulders and long-term repetitive stress injuries. They can also get in the way of typing and mousing. Fortunately, it’s literally an easy push button adjustment to correctly set arm rest height on most modern office chairs.
I recommend setting your arm rests using the following steps:

1. Lower one armrest all of the way to the bottom.
2. From your normal (hopefully good posture) seated position, hold your arm on that side so that your elbow is at your side and your forearm is parallel to the ground.
3. Raise the armrest with your free hand until your adjusting hand comes in contact with your outstretched forearm.
4. Repeat on the other side.

If done correctly, you have about a hand-width of space between your forearms and your chair arms. You want the arm rest just below your forearm, but not touching it. This will allow you to type, mouse, and perform any other tasks at your desk space without the arm rests getting in the way. Typing or mousing with your arms on the armrests may seem like a good idea, but long term it opens you up to shoulder, wrist, and elbow problems.
It may feel unnatural at first if you have become used to typing with elbows splayed out on arm rests, but if you just stick with the new, lower armrest position for a day or two it will start to feel more natural than your old, high one. You may even notice an immediate improvement in stiff shoulders.
For more information on sitting dynamics and chair setup that maximizes your health and comfort throughout the day, check out our Ergonomic Chair Buyer’s Guide.