We spend most of the working day in a seated position, commuting, working, answering emails, writing blogs, etc. We have become attached to our computers, essential to any work getting done.
Starting in college we spend more time than ever seated behind a laptop. Carrying a laptop or tablet has become the latest requirement for school. Hours are spent in auditorium style seats that are not designed to allow you to work on a computer, let alone sit upright with proper lumbar support. This forces you to mold yourself to your computer and chair and sacrifice your neck and back in the process.
Finally we graduate and enter the workforce where we spend 8+ hours behind our workstation. Welcome to the rest of your working career!
Spending this amount of time in poor posture is a recipe for pain, tightness, and discomfort in the neck and shoulders with headaches, upper and lower back. If you spend eight hours a day teaching your neck, shoulders, and back to be tight and stiff, you’ll likely need to spend a lot of time outside of work trying to loosen it up.
Optimal Posture
The easiest way to keep an eye on your posture is to focus on your ears being directly over your shoulders. In that position, the weight of your head can be evenly distributed to the muscles of your neck - front to back.
I love to use the snowman analogy with my patients. When you build a snowman, you make sure to stack each respective snowball in the center of the previous base. To stack the body and the head on the edge of the prior snowball would be detrimental to the snowman’s body, eventually forcing the snowman to topple over. For humans, we are lucky enough to have muscles that prevent this toppling affect from taking place, but not without a toll on our muscles and joints.
So attempt to be that perfectly stacked and tall snowman. If your ears and head start to drift in front of your shoulders, you’re using all of the muscles in the back of your neck to keep your head from falling forward. The further your head moves forward, the more weight the muscles have to manage.
Using the muscles of your neck and shoulders in the wrong position will lead to chronic knots forming in the muscles and scar tissue to be deposited in the muscles and fascia. If this goes on long enough, It will affect the function of those muscles and you’ll have to work pretty hard to get rid of the knots and scar tissue.
The other thing you’ll notice is the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine are linked like cogs. If your head shoots in front of your shoulders, your mid back will start to round like the hunchback of Notre Dame and your lower back will curl under you. This puts excessive strain on the lower back.
Never adapt to your workstation. Make the workstation adapt to your body.
Let’s set up your workstation.
The first step is to optimize your position. We want you to sit with good posture, with your head over your shoulders, chest up. Place your butt as far back in the chair as possible with your feet flat on the ground, utilizing the low back support in your chair.
Now adjust your monitor height. Optimally, middle to top of the screen should be eye level. If you have multiple screens, we want them to be as close to each other as possible so that you do not have to turn your head left then back to the right all day long. Similarly, we don’t want two screens on top of each other, forcing you to look up and down all day.
The next thing to adjust is typically the most important and the most forgotten. Bring the keyboard and mouse to you. You should be able to relax your shoulders, keep your elbows at a 90 degree angle, and use the keyboard and mouse. If you have to reach even the slightest bit, your arms will fatigue and you will begin to fall forward into the desk, forcing your head and neck into a bad position.
Holding optimal posture can be very hard at the beginning. You’re asking muscles of your back to do the work they haven’t don’t in a while. To “cheat” into good posture, use a rolled up towel or a pillow roll behind the small of your back. This will allow you to simply lean back over the pillow putting you in good posture without requiring the back strength to hold you in that position.
Standing desks
Standing desks are typically an improvement over sitting all day. However, it is entirely possible to stand at your desk with poor posture. While the body was not designed to sit all day, it similarly was not designed to stand all day. Make a goal to stand for a majority of the day while taking necessary sitting breaks.
A sign that your body is ready for you to sit is when you begin to kick one leg out and shift your weight. Sit for 5-10 minutes and then stand back up on both feet evenly.
The same principles of desk set up apply. We want your ears over your shoulders. Middle to top of the screen eye level. Shoulders relaxed, elbows bent to 90 degrees and the keyboard and mouse pulled close to you. Feet directly under your hips with your weight evenly on each foot.
If you’re experiencing pain from working behind a desk all day, call today for an appointment. We can get you fast pain relief for neck and shoulder pain, headaches, lower back pain, etc. We can also help you optimize your workstation to fit your needs.
Be sure to check out our blog, 6 Stretches to do at Your Desk to Improve Posture and Relieve Neck and Back Pain - by clicking here.