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Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

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Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#21

Post by graeme »

Having dealt with RSI and having worked at home for a long time, my list of tips that helped the most. Ordered for importance to me personally rather than cost or other factors:

* Sit stand desk. Not just for standing: lets you adjust height while seated to ideal level

* Placing keyboard/monitor at proper ergonomic heights to one another. This implies arranging keyboard height then having a separate monitor raised up, not a laptop

* Armaid and theracane. Two wonderful and cheap self care tools for tight muscles. Armaid works the arms, theracane all over but I use it for trapezius

* Handshoe mouse. By far the most comfortable and ergonomic mouse I ever used. Once I got this my remaining troubles vanished

* Trigger point massage. Works out small trigger points and knots that can cause referred pain

* Good physio, especially one trained in muscle activation technique (MAT)

* Herman Miller chair. This seems to help, but basically any chair you are comfortable in is the key point.

DO NOT just work through the pain. It compounds and takes much longer to fix. If you address pain while it’s small and set up right, it is easy to deal with.

I lost months (years?) of productivity to RSI. Take it seriously. Doing great now fortunately.

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#23

Post by mtalantikite »

I don't know, I found the best way to fix issues with my posture was to strengthen my core and shoulders, while increasing flexibility in my hamstrings, hip flexors, and shoulders.

I also never brought my aeron chair home from my office space when the lockdown started and for the past year I've used a cheap piano bench at my desk that has no back. Forces me to stay upright all day and it's been surprisingly great.

There's really no device that's going to do it for you, strengthening and stretching even a little bit goes a long way.

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#24

Post by mtalantikite »

klyrs wrote: post #19

I had recurring back pain before the pandemic, which hasn't been around since the first few months. I credit the piano bench that I sit on. Turns out, I slouch in the stupidly expensive ergonomic chair in my office, but I sit upright at the piano bench.

I just commented a similar thing -- I started using my piano bench when I had to move my office to my home and it's been great. The occasional fatigue is a good signal for me to stand up and walk around even.

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#25

Post by hprotagonist »

silicon_wally wrote: post #22
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

My posture’s improved since i built a proper desk, but i suspect it’ll improve more once the erg is finally out of backorder and i can torture myself at home.

what's the erg? a rowing machine?

yeah. One of the more efficient home torture devices ever invented!

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#26

Post by leetcrew »

hn8788 wrote: post #2

My wife and I used our first stimulus checks to buy Herman Miller chairs for our home offices, and it's probably the single biggest QoL increase I can remember from a purchase.

great chairs for the office, but awful if you want to play guitar at your computer. I guess you can't have everything in one chair.

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#27

Post by MereInterest »

hundchenkatze wrote: post #13
throwaway53453 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'm glad things are going good for you. Some of us are still struggling. Many people are too poor to splurge 1K on a luxury office chair. This article is about those people.

Did you reply to the wrong person? The person you're replying to said nothing about buying expensive chairs.

His comment seems reasonable in context. The article is about poor posture, with chairs and laptops being indicated from the initial image. The initial comment says that nothing has changed for them, implying that their home office setup is just as good as their pre-covid office setup. The reply is to that implicit statement, saying that office chairs are quite expensive, so not everyone is able to reproduce the same setup in a home office.

These are not explicitly stated in the comments, but can be reasonably inferred from the context.

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#28

Post by muskox2 »

mtalantikite wrote: post #23

I don't know, I found the best way to fix issues with my posture was to strengthen my core and shoulders, while increasing flexibility in my hamstrings, hip flexors, and shoulders. I also never brought my aeron chair home from my office space when the lockdown started and for the past year I've used a cheap piano bench at my desk that has no back. Forces me to stay upright all day and it's been surprisingly great. Th…

I concur, shoulder and back work is one thing that helped me open my chest up more than anything else. Even just hanging on a set of rings for a minute after sitting for a while feels really good.

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#29

Post by slowmovintarget »

neogodless wrote: post #18
fortran77 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing a full-length article and no podcast. (I am a paid subscriber to the New Yorker.)

Whoa. OK so in Firefox, I first got a paywall modal. I opened the article again in Private mode, and I thought I got the full article (2 paragraphs) with audio. But if I open the article in Edge, I do see that it's much longer than two paragraphs. (I do still see the audio clip before the first paragraph.) Hmm...

I'm blocking the blizzard of trackers using Firefox and uBlock Origin. The best I can seem to get is two paragraphs and the audio player embed.

I'm not willing to fire up a pants-down browser to read this.

Edit: I was curious so I fired up Firefox's container system. A clean container does load the article. There's some manner of fingerprinting going on then.

Re: Posture: Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

#30

Post by mft_ »

graeme wrote: post #21

Having dealt with RSI and having worked at home for a long time, my list of tips that helped the most. Ordered for importance to me personally rather than cost or other factors: * Sit stand desk. Not just for standing: lets you adjust height while seated to ideal level * Placing keyboard/monitor at proper ergonomic heights to one another. This implies arranging keyboard height then having a separate monitor raised up…

Can you recommend a trusted source for working out what the ideal ergonomic setup is for an individual?
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