Office Chair General Ergonomic Overview from RFM Preferred Seating
I’m here today to show you how to make your new chair the most comfortable tool in the office environment I’m here to show you how to adjust it for optimal comfort throughout the day very few people know what the appropriate height of the seat pan should be it should be from the floor to the top of your knee that is your body scientific measurement on how high you should be seated from the floor we have these paddles on the chair the middle paddle controls the height of the chair you want to raise the seat so that it’s equal to the height of the top of your knee that is the appropriate height for you to be seated from that in any chair that you sit in is the height that you should be seated at so now that you have your chair at the appropriate height notice where my knee is whatever chair you’re sitting in your knees should always be slightly below the hip that rotates the pelvis brings the shoulder square over the hips head square over the shoulders to adjust the angle of the seat is our front paddle it also allows the chair to rock up as rock down as lock when you pull the paddle up it allows you to rock in the chair so now that we’ve shown you the appropriate seat height and how to put your chair and Rock and adjust the seat now we need to show you how to adjust the back we don’t want to sit all the way forward this is not a good comfortable position to be in so by pulling up on the back paddle you can correct the back angle adjustment to find the most comfortable spot for you when you find that comfortable spot push the paddle down I like to call it flanking it’s a very technical term chairs speak so to speak one of the most wonderful features available on all preferred seating by RFM is the air lumbar option this option is available on all of the task chairs it is very important that you get out of the chair to make this adjustment trying to reach around the back of the chair and pump that up could cause you a shoulder strain or sprain we are trying to make you comfortable in your work environment not harm you in your work environment in order to put air in you just pump this up I would start off with 6 compressions every morning when you come into work air atmosphere pressure humidity rain Sun can affect the amount of air that goes into the air bladder I will allow you to reach around and let the air out if you get too much air in if you work in an office environment maybe you can ask your cube buddy to come over and pump you up so now that we have the backrest at the appropriate angle we need to make sure that it’s set at the appropriate height to do so we place both hands one on each side of the backrest and gently pull up on the ratchet back it is controlled by a mechanism that we call a VAM vertical adjustment mechanism that is how we get the backrest at the appropriate height we want the lumbar curve of the chair to fit in the lumbar curve of your spine typically that’s just right around the belt line or slightly above the butt to get the back rest all the way down again you must take it all the way up let the back click all the way to the bottom and then we adjust to find your perfect comfort in your lumbar support area people always ask me what is the correct height for the arms that’s based on your personal comfort and where your arm is in relation to the seat you want the armrests to be equal with your elbow in this case it’s deviating my arm up so I want to lower the arm down we don’t want the shoulder up we don’t want the arm down we want the arm exactly at a ninety degree parallel to support the arm without strain on the shoulder or the neck to do that we have a dial and you just dial up or your dial down for your personal comfort so now we’re going to turn our attention to the other side of the chair one of the most important things about a good comfortable ergonomic fit is seat pan depth with this device the seat pan slider we can adjust the seat to fit us appropriately I like to get out of the seat to do it I think it’s a little bit easier to adjust rule of thumb when you are figuring out what length of seat pan you need is two to three fingers between the front of the chair and the back of the knee too far forward and you’re going to impinge that tendon too far back and you’re going to get yourself tight hamstrings so appropriate seat length is very important appropriate seat depth is very important so I’m gonna demonstrate that out of the chair to adjust the seat pan pull up on the paddle and move the seat back to bring it out I like to instruct people to wedge their hand between the seat and the backrest hold the paddle up and move the seat forward that will show you how to adjust the seat and then you need to get it adjusted for you
