I’ve been used to being active or mobile in most of my daily operations and workplace duties. I’ve never really had a desk job. So I am definetly not the person to be spruiking about ergonomics in the workplace. I’m not even an avid user. However, after spending a week with my Mum in a house where there is no sofa, merely old fashioned English chairs and a stiff upper back position, the reality of good sitting was brought home to me when in an attempted yoga workout to relieve myself of my lack of movement, I found myself at the mercy of a lower back spasm.
Having not been conditioned to sitting as much as I do when I return home for the annual Christmas pilgrimage, Perhaps part of this factor was the 7 hour drive up to the northern rivers area of NSW. it was inevitable. I’d fallen into the trap of having tight, flexed hips for an extended period of timeand had to take a good look at the way in which I sit and how to rectify that with… gulp… stretching or movement. Its the reality for so many of us, we HAVE to sit and so much of the work that comes into the clinic can be traced to how badly we sit (or stand) in our workplace on a daily work week basis.
To quote Kelly Starrett, a well respected strength and conditioning coach and creator of www.mobilityWOD.com “Sitting is death”. Perhaps a little blunt and curt but this sums up our issue that to sit is to be immobile and mobility is a key to keeping us functioning and healthy. This is a fundamental truth. If we fail to move there are a whole heap of other complications that affect our health on a fundamental level. From cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory disease… you could go on and on. But we do have to sit, and sometimes stand for long periods of time. It’s inevitable.
So how do we do it well?
Sitting or standing is actually a technical skill. As much as a handstand or muscle up - there is a way to sit with proficiency and few of us are aware of how to do it well. Siting comes down to maintaining a braced neutral spine. That good ol’ core work. Now don’t be fooled into thinking that the core is just turning on your abs or your transversus abdominus or pelvic floor. The core is a whole network of muscles and connective tissue that ties into keeping your spine in a braced and neutral position. this involves the hip flexors, the gluteals and the leg muscles as well as the back muscles of the spine and even the larger muscles such as the Quadratus Lumborum and even the Latissimus Dorsi. All these muscles play a role in stabilising the pelvis and abdominal cavity whilst maintaining the 3 natural curves of the lumbar, thoracic and cervical spine.
Kelly Starrett: “Becoming a Supple Leopard”
So what is the best position? Think Victorian England. Sofas and chairs were stiff, upright constructions meant to reinforce correct seated positions for things like needlework, reading, holding cups of tea without spilling! Not the slovenly comfortable recumbent lounge position we have come to associate with contemporary furniture where we lie with our legs up, necks curved reading devices or watching tv. Hips are flexed but no more than 90degrees. Feet are flat on the floor. Shoulders are balanced over our hips whilst trying to maintain a lumbar curve with ribs down and neutral with the cervical spine balanced squarely over the shoulder girdle. Sound exhausting? IT IS! It’s hard to maintain this position. Inevitably very few of us can maintain muscular endurance enough to be able to sustain this position for longer than 30min. Even the fittest of us will succumb to a slouch, a rotation and a curvature at some point.
When we train we train our body to a conditioned response. We are telling the body ‘this is the position and level of tension that I want you to be in when you engage in this action’. How many of us train our seated posture? The Braced Neutral position is something Starrett talks about with maintaining abdominal tension. For effective posture (standing or sitting) Starrett talks about maintaining the pelvis and abdominal brace as the foundation for good posture. Effectively training your body for simple function. Starrett cites 20% abdominal tension as being the base point for effective Neutral Brace Position. Its also about activating your gluteals. When we sit our gluteals go on vacation. They effectively turn off. This is accentuted even more when we sit in a position that is not the ideal upright position and the hips are more flexed that the recommended 90 degrees. Training your body to turn on the gluteals whilst activating your abdominal muscles to form a ‘brace’ around your lumbar spine is an active way of preparing for movement.
Think of a deadlift or squat. Whats the thing that you do before your perform the lift? You increase the tension around your core. Its natural. If you’re going to throw a ball, swing a bat, push a wardrobe filled with books, most of us will breathe in, maintain tension in our abdomen and push. This is bracing the body against load. Maximal load or perceived maximal load requires maximal tension or brace. So standing or sitting requires a 20% activation of this maximal brace. Just squeezing your butt when you sit can be enough to make your turn on your abdomen and even correct your posture. Try it. See what your spine does if you squeeze your butt. :)
What I love about Swiss Balls is they are constantly moving and rolling. Ergonomic chairs must be good because everybody swears by them. When you are sitting for long periods of time, ergonomic support is of great benefit to helping to reduce the load on the muscles that stabilise and assist with proper lumbar and pelvic alignment. For me, I’ve always promoted the Swiss Ball as the best ergonomic chair. It moves - so you have to move with it. The constant re-adjusting and rolling when you are seated is good for your spine. I even take it one step further and in periods where i am seated for long hours, the briefest of roll outs on a swiss ball and extending into a beautiful backwards bend over a ball aka like doing a backflip is a great way to shake up the standard seated position. ITS FUN TOO. :)
Essentially being in a single position for more than 30 minutes is disastrous. Traditional estimates say we should move for 5 min to every hour of a seated position. Professor Jack Callaghan of the University of Waterloo in Canada throws this out the window with his research in 2015 promoting movement ratios of 1:1 to 1:3 for efficient prevention of seated (or standing) back pain. That means 10 min out of every 30. Callaghan cites the ‘move early and move often’ approach, likening movement with sitting to dehydration and exercise. “If you wait until you’re thirsty it’s too late. If you wait until you have pain before you change positions, it’s too late. This pain is hard to get rid of, so you have to be moving and changing positions before it starts.” He also cites regular movement patterns as the best way to train away lower back pain. Extending in the prone position (plank) as well as in the supine position (bridge) along with side bracing between elbows and feet (side plank) are the best ways to reduce lower back pain from presenting.
However, all this moving may not be perceived as possible to your average office worker. So how do we do this? It can be as easy as ‘changing your position’. Enter the kettle bell. Having a kettle bell under one foot can be enough to change the way we sit or change our position. Regularly swapping the kettle bell from one foot to another is an acceptable change of position that requires minute shifts in our postural muscles and re-establishes the braced neutral position. Ideally getting out of the chair at every possible opportunity is also advised. When chatting on the phone, stand up. When reading a memo, walk around. Even kneeling at your desk can help to open up the hips whilst still being glued to the monitor. Possibly strange but effective.
So the message is clear. If we are going to sit or even stand for long periods of time without movement we are going to experience fatigue and this will lead to pain. So move. Change position, find a way to create changes in tension and contraction so that you aren’t stuck in one position for any longer than 30min. Don’t wait for the pain to be your signal to take action. Train the pain away and be proactive in attempting to keep your body feeling at its peak. You won’t regret taking the holiday or road trip.
