5 Secrets to Make Your Office Chair Comfortable & Pain Free
♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪ ♪ Physical therapist on the internet ♪ – Hi folks, I’m Bob Schrupp, physical therapist. – Brad Heineck, physical therapist. – And we’re the most famous physical therapist on the internet.
– In our opinion of course, Bob. – Today we’re gonna cover five secrets to make your office chair comfortable and pain free. If you sit all day, this is very important because sitting alone can lead to back pain and neck pain.
– Right. – Especially with poor posture, – I’m thinking if anybody sits all day long they’re gonna wanna know this information ’cause it’s good. – And pass it on. – There you go. – By the way, if you’re new to our channel, please take a second to subscribe to us, we provide videos on stay healthy, fit, pain free, and we upload everyday.
Also, you’re gonna wanna join us on our social media channels because we’re always giving something away. Go to bobandbrad.com, go to the giveaway section, or to Facebook at bobandbrad, and it’ll be pinned to the top of the page.
We’re giving away the RENPHO cordless massager here. This is a great massager for the price. – Oh yeah. – I’ll tell ya, it does percussion. It’s 40 bucks, I mean a lot of these, we’ve been looking at other massagers, that for years cost well over 100.
– Right. – So it’s a deal. – Yeah, it’s a good deal. – All right, so, what do we first look for in a traditional chair, Brad? And then I’m also gonna show an alternative too. – Sure. – The first thing that’s important is you wanna consider the height.
– Exactly. – If the chair, put it really up hair once, Brad. As high as it will go. – Well. – No, first go up high. – That’s it. – Oh, that’s as high as it goes. – That’s as high as this one goes. – ‘Cause you know with this one, it’s not too bad for you, Brad, but we don’t like to see the slant going down this way, because you’re gonna get it cut off pressure underneath the thigh.
Now, if you’re really short, and your legs are down even further, yeah like that, then you’re definitely gonna get cut off pressure underneath the thigh. – And you’ll feel the edge of the chair cut into that hamstring muscle, cuts the circulation off, can interfere with the nerves and stuff.
– And it can cause more swelling in your legs if that’s an issue with you all ready. – Exactly. – And in a lot of them you like to have that waterfall front or tear drop front, so that it’s nice and comfortable when it’s– – Right here.
– Along that way. Now, let me jump in there Brad. – Okay. – [Bob] I’m gonna show you what happens. Oh you’re making a mess here. – [Brad] Sorry. – I’m gonna show you what happens if it’s too low. Okay, as a tall person here, now what happens is my knees are up way too up much higher than my hips.
– Right, so if you put a line there you can see we’re angling down this way which is no good. Puts a lot of stress on the lower back. – Lower back gets rounded out, it’s really hard to keep your back straight, like when you sit on bleachers.
– Exactly. – You gotta sit, you round out. Also, it puts the pressure right on the tail bone. The sit bones and the tail bone. – Right. – You want the pressure on the meaty thigh right here. – Yeah, spread it out across a nice surface area.
– So, generally you want this knee either level with the hips or slightly higher than the hips, not greatly higher like they are here. That’s all I gotta say about that. – There you go Bob, next. – Okay, next thing is, we’re gonna talk about materials.
That sounded like Forrest Gump. That’s all I have to say about that, sort of thing. Okay, you wanna make sure the material of your seat is not slippery. – Yeah, this is big. – Yeah, ’cause this is kind of a nice chair.
It seems to be, but it’s a slippery surface, so what you’re gonna happen is. – So in other words, leather chairs aren’t the best for you? – No, they really are not. You really want a breathable fabric that has a little bit of friction to it almost.
So it helps keep you in place. – Right. Where you put your body, and where you want it, it stays, it’s not sliding around. And like you said, it’s more comfortable ’cause it breathes. – The next thing you wanna look at is, you wanna have some back support if you can.
Something that’s gonna give you a little bit of, establish the arch there, or pressure against your sacrum, that feels really good to me. – And some seats already have it in here, a lot of the cheaper ones do not.
So you have to add something. – So this one does not. You wanna make sure the back seat is also very solid, that it’s not that springy back. – Right, when you lean back and it– – Yeah, it springs right back.
We have another one, I should of brought that one in here ’cause it’s terrible, you just lean against it and it starts going way back. Even this one, is I lean against it, look what it does. – Right, you can see it.
– So this is Brad’s favorite back support for his car. The Kebado. – Right, I actually it in my car, I have it in my recliner, they’re wonderful for me. – This is why he pulled it out of his car right now, to use it for this video.
– Exactly. – I like this, I don’t like it in the car, to be honest with you, Bob, I like it in an office chair because it gives me enough thickness here, so now it’s pushing against my sacrum, which gives me support for my lower back and now I can work, you can see how I work forward, and yet I’m receiving support on my lower back, even though I’m working forward, let’s say I’m typing on my computer, or writing, there’s support.
And then whenever I get tired, I can lean back against it. – Right, take a little break, a little breather, and good posture, and that’s what this’ll do. This is made out of memory foam by the way, which I like that a lot.
– Right. – And everyone’s back’s a little bit different. So each back may need a different type of support. – Yeah, we’ve got all, a bunch of different supports. We’ve got the Mkezie supports, some of these tie into place, I mean it’s really hard for us to make a recommendation on a back support because it is so personal.
– And it depends on the persons body, as well as the comfort of the chair or how the chair is manufactured. Is it a soft, cushy chair, or is a firm chair? – See again, this hits me nice now, right in the sacrum, it’s not gonna support me up in here when I go like this, that wouldn’t be comfortable, but it’s comfortable for me while I’m working forward.
Which is generally, most of the time, what you’re doing, right? – And sometimes it’s just as a reminder for you to maintain good posture while you’re working and not getting that sloped, round over hunched.
– Right, exactly. It’s saying, hey, no, don’t do that. So next thing you wanna look at is arms. You want the arms to be, the upper arm to be vertical, as possible, when you’re typing even, you don’t wanna be forward like this, that’s putting pressure on the shoulder all day long.
And if you’re gonna have support, you wanna have it so that it hits you right when you making the right angle here, but this arm is vertical, and this is a great way to type. Sometimes we even say a little bit lower than vertical even.
Horizontal I should say. – I went to a class, they suggested put the keypad right on your lap. – Right on your lap. – And that brings it down more. If you have adjustable arm rests, some people aren’t even aware of it, but adjust them so you can rest your arms on there.
– [Bob] A lot of them are, I don’t think these are. – Yeah, this one I don’t think is either. – Again, this is not an expensive chair by any means. – But some people have these. – Okay, for number five, we’re gonna talk about an alternative.
And this has become very popular, one way to make your office chair more comfortable is to actually not always sit in it and sometimes actually stand. – Which has become much more popular in the last five years.
– Right, in my sons, he works for Echoelab, I think I can say that right? – I think you just did. – Yeah, and he says that everybody has a standing desk. – It’s just commonplace. – Yeah, it’s just common practice now.
And we’ve got the leader in standing desks here, the VARIDESK, I pretty much can say that with confidence, they’re the leader, VARIDESK. And so you can go ahead and raise it up. Now you said this has 10 adjustments, right? – [Brad] Yep, 10 index adjustments.
– 10 different levels. – You can hear hear it click, click, click, yep. – And then it really locks in place. But this one really has a nice feature of having a really good work surface here. – So the work surface for your keypad is about four inches lower than where your screen is which is nice, ’cause some of them are flat and then you have to make more adjustments.
– And a nice name they actually used, they also have the VARIChair. V-A-R-I-Chair. – Yeah, let’s get this out of the way. – So this is kind of interesting, Brad, I’ve never used one of these before, I know we used to recommend this for people that, remember, that would work at work stations.
– In a factory setting. – In a factory setting. They worked a lot, doing stand-up, and then just to give themselves a little rest, they would lean up against a stool, a high stool like this. – Right, ’cause they need it to be up for working, but you couldn’t sit and work, but you could go down a little bit, take pressure off the legs, arms, and feet.
– What’s nice about this one though, as you can see, it actually swings forward. – That is a nice option. – That’s a really nice feature. This is a very well made chair by the way. – It is. – This is solid.
But you can see, I can actually lean forward like this, and now look at what it does to my back. So here I’m kind of rounded out, here I’m in good posture. – You got that pelvic tilt. This is spring loaded down here, this is a very well built chair.
And it adjusts up and down. – Right, so you can work with the desk on a higher level like this. You can stand up. And you can also go all the way back down, hold it right there, and then I can lower this one.
And my wife by the way, she’s the one that won’t give this chair up, by the way. (laughs) My daughter was hankering to get it, and my wife won’t give it up, it’s causing a big family fight. – Yeah, she trumps your daughter there.
– Yeah, I told my daughter, are you serious, you think I’m gonna get in between this? Seriously. – I like it when a parent holds their ground with their kid. – But anyway, the same thing, now I can get it down low and now I can lean forward, so I still got good posture, and it also twists.
I mean, I can go like this. – Rotate. – Yep, it rotates. This is a great chair. – Yeah it is. – I can see why my wife likes it. Again, I see her, I go walking by her desk, this is her home desk, and she’s using it at all the positions.
I see her sitting sometimes, I see her standing leaning against it, sometimes is see her standing without it. – Well, that’s because she knows you’re watching and you’re keeping an eye on her. – No she has no perception.
– It doesn’t matter what you think? – No, no, what I say or what I think has no bearing on what she does. All right, well so, those are some of the hints, we hope that helps you out, ’cause remember Brad and I can fix just about anything.
– Except for. – A broken heart. – Yep, right there it is. – But we’re working on it. Thanks a lot.
