A friend of mine owns a business and had computer-based staff complaining of sore backs. Being a good employer she replaced all the chairs in the office with fancy ergonomic ones at a cost of $900 each. Which made absolutely no difference. When she asked me to analyse her office I realised nobody moved - people came in the morning, sat down, and that was basically it for the day. They may have had the best chairs but the fact is the human body is designed to move, it cannot tolerate sustained positions no matter how supportive a chair is.
It may surprise you to know that someone in a wheelchair has to perform pressure relieving manoeuvres (eg lifting their weight off the chair) every 15 minutes to prevent pressure sores. The same is true for the discs in your spine- they compress immediately on sitting and need to be decompressed every 15-30 minutes to allow them to expand. Yet we sit on our butts for hours at a time and wonder why we have a sore back. So I often get asked “what is the best chair then?” I’ll come to that but here’s some background…
The body is basically made up of three parts. Firstly, the skeleton which is simply a bag of bones with no support. If you stood up a “naked” skeleton it would collapse.
Secondly, right next to the skeleton and surrounding it is a system of muscles which support and protect the joints and bones. These are the tonic muscles and run from the base of your skull all the way down your whole body, even under the arches of your feet - I call it this system the “muscular skeleton”. These muscles decompress your skeleton- think of the time you thought there was another stair and there wasn’t and you jar your body. That’s because these guys weren’t activated. They are like low watt bulbs; they use very little energy and they like to be left on for sustained periods. Think about what is holding your head up right now; the weight is not resting on the joints, rather is is being held up by the muscles which are decompressing the spine. (Well they should be!). The traditional word “core” which everybody refers in the stomach area is part of this system.
Thirdly, we have the external muscles that you can see, the ones everyone works on at the gym and what I call the “beach muscles”. They are known as the phasic muscles. They are the show ponies of your body, they look good but they have an average work ethic; they like to work for short bursts where they burn a lot of fuel and spit out a lot of exhaust fumes [lactic acid] .They need an “on” cycle and an “off’ cycle to do this (hence phasic) where they burn fuel and then have a rest to get rid of the garbage. The two muscle systems are not interchangeable; for example you are able to go walking for an hour and your calves are quite happy but try going up on your toes for 5 minutes and holding- your calves cramp. You are trying to use phasic muscles in a tonic function. The modern world is killing our tonic (support) muscles so we go to the gym and try to replace them with phasic (movement) muscles. But it doesn’t work that way.
Another question I get asked is “how do we work on our support muscles then?” and my answer is “use them!” I have been lucky enough to work at international athletic events and it is always intrigued me watching the Africans (who must be amongst the straightest people in the world; just look at National Geographic magazine) at mealtimes. All the Europeans sat leaning on the back of their chairs for support while the Africans perched on the front of the chairs using them like stools. And it occurred to me that Africans did not know how to switch off their support muscles as they use them all the time- walking, running, or squatting- and when you squat you need to use your support muscles to hold you up. They did not know the “comfort” of the Western chair where we switch off all our muscles and put all the weight on our spinal discs and bones. (Ironically the corollary in Africa is the women with the rings around their necks- take them off and their heads fall over as they have lost support muscle; chairs do the same thing for us).
But what do we do when we get a sore back sitting all day at work? We buy a more supportive chair. Which makes us even weaker. So our backs get sorer. Then we go to the gym and build our movement muscles which are absolutely no help.
So back to the question of “what is the best chair then?”. My answer is “a beer crate with a cushion on it”. (Or my soapbox). Then hold yourself up using your own muscles and get up every 30 minutes and move. Use your $900 on something worthwhile. (Apologies to all fancy chair designers and office ergonomic experts).