The average American office worker sits at a computer desk 40 hours per week. That’s over 2,000 hours per year. Multiply those 2,000 hours by how many years you’ve had a job working in a sitting position. That’s a lot of repetitive strain to undo before we can sit with correct sitting posture. Learning to sit properly in an office chair is going to take patience. The good news is that I’ve been obsessively learning and testing different good habits for years. My story is based on my own experience. The different ways I corrected my poor posture aren’t medical advice. Choose which info could be helpful for you and your situation. Talk with your doctor and be the strongest advocate possible for your own health.
It’s super easy to hunch over a keyboard when you’re working for prolonged periods of time. It’s the most common poor posture habit when sitting in a desk chair. Reading a monitor from arm’s length, as well as using a keyboard and mouse, are all actions that occur in front of our bodies. These actions naturally force a large amount of muscles and tendons to constantly pull us out of sitting up straight.
Not sitting properly at a computer desk causes many negative effects. The short-term effects that bothered me the most were being tired constantly and having a cloudy mental clarity. The long-term effects I suffered from were pain in the neck and back, poor blood circulation, weak legs, stiff neck, tight hips, and weight gain.
How to Properly Sit at a Computer Desk
Good posture is not the only element required to sit properly at a computer desk. There are many other variables involved. The ones we’ll touch on today are breathing, sleep quality, and sitting posture itself. All of these variables are directly related to how well we hold our good posture in the sitting position. Ignoring one or more of these variables will cause you to have poor posture quickly.
Breathe Deeply More Often
We don’t need to remember to breathe. Breathing comes naturally. However, breathing deeply does not come naturally. I’ll be the first person to admit that I barely breathe sometimes. I’ll get to thinking about something I need to do. Even with just a little bit of stress or anxiety, my muscles will tighten up and I’ll take in just enough oxygen to survive.
The stress and repetitive strain of sitting in an office chair often leads to shallow breathing. Sitting up straight is very difficult to do when we are taking shallow breaths. Our muscles tighten up because they aren’t getting enough blood flow, oxygen, and nutrients.
There are many forms of breathing deeply. Meditation, yoga, or even simply taking a break at your desk to focus on some breathing exercises. Whichever method we choose, we need to be consistent and do it more often in order to maintain correct sitting posture for longer periods of time.
Improve Your Sleep Quality
Until recently, I’ve never been big into technology wearables that tracked my fitness. Being in my forties, exercise is more of a zen process for me these days. My primary fitness goals are to experience less pain, feel energetic, improve my posture, and increase my strength. I’m not as focused on the amount of weight, number of reps, or how much I destroyed my body in a workout. That’s what I thought wearables were all about, until now.
I’ve started wearing a technology that also tracks my sleep and recovery quality. It’s been eye opening for me. I knew I had bad sleeping habits before I started wearing it, but this wearable has taught me that I really need to get my act together and improve my sleeping habits immediately.
I’ll talk more in a future article about the specific wearable I use, but let’s get back to the topic at hand. Improving your sleep quality will improve your posture. If you only sleep 4 hours one night, you’re going to get tired more quickly the next day, compared to sleeping 7 hours the night before. Being able to sit properly in an office chair for 8 hours is an endurance event. The earlier in the day we are tired, the more our performance will suffer. In this case, the worse our sleep quality is, the more our poor posture will suffer. Improving our sleep quality is a critical variable for maintaining good sitting posture.
How to Properly Sit at a Computer Desk
Keep the spine “stacked” in an “S curve” when in any position for an extended period of time.
The spine should look like a very slight “S” when looking from a side angle of the user’s right side. This is the most important mechanic when it comes to sitting at a computer. If you do it correctly, a lot of other aspects automatically fall into place. If you don’t do this step correctly, it causes a chain reaction of many other posture issues that cannot be avoided. Degeneration of the spinal discs located between the vertebrae takes place, which is non-reversible. Many joints get overextended once the spine is no longer stacked (shoulders and hips especially).
Keep the low back arched slightly forward (this is called a lumbar curve).
If you cannot maintain an “S curve” with the vertebrae stacked throughout the spine, make sure you at least maintain this lumbar curve. Otherwise, lower back pain and strain will eventually happen.
The back support of your office chair should support your upper body, allowing you to keep it comfortably at a 90 degree angle from the floor.
Take advantage of the back rest to support your upper body. You don’t have to lean 100% of your body weight back into the back rest. Just make sure to take off some of the pressure that gravity would otherwise take a major toll on (compared to if you were just sitting straight up and not using the back rest of the desk chair). Make sure not to flatten your spine when resting against the back support of your office chair. Maintain that natural “S curve” in your spine I mentioned earlier.
Maintain an equal balance of strength between your lower back and your abs.
There shouldn’t be more tension in the lower back than the abs, or vice versa. If there is, it will cause pain in the lower back and muscle dysfunction throughout the body.
Don’t sit down with anything in your back pocket (wallet, phone, anything).
Doing so will cause your hips to be uneven. Repetitive strain while sitting with your hips uneven will eventually cause you to also stand with your hips uneven. This will eventually cause you to walk, run, and squat with uneven hips. Your legs are a very important part of your sitting posture, not just your back.
How to Properly Adjust Your Desk Chair
Lower or raise your desk chair height so that your hips are slightly higher than your knees. Don’t ever sit with your hips lower than your knees.
Don’t raise your seat height too high so that your wrists have to be bent to use your keyboard or mouse. Make sure the height of your seat allows for you to keep your wrists straight on the desk at all times.
Your ankles should either be directly under your knees or slightly ahead of them. Your ankles should never be behind your knees.
Do not cross your legs or feet. Just don’t do it. Every major joint from the waist down would be affected (hips, knees, and ankles). Keep your feet flat on the floor. If you’re short and your feet don’t reach the floor when you’re sitting in a desk chair, use some type of elevated footrest to place your feet on.
Avoid looking down at your fingers as much as possible. It will cause pain in the back of your neck and spine area, also disrupting the stacked “S curve” of your spine.
Where to Place Your Computer Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse
The top portion of your monitor should be around eye level. You should never have to look up to see any portion of your monitor. You should only have to look side to side or slightly downward.
Your keyboard, mouse, and desk should be level with your elbows. Your forearms should be parallel to the floor and your wrists should be straight.
Place Often Used Items Within Reach
Keep your shoulders slightly back, down, and somewhat relaxed. Don’t lunge your shoulders forward to reach for your keyboard, mouse, phone, tablet, or notepad. Lunging forward for these items will cause too much internal rotation in your shoulders, as well as overextension in your back. Always keep these items placed within arm’s length on your desk.
Avoid Phone Strain
The old school habit of holding the phone with no hands is literally a neck breaker. You know, leaning your head to one side, holding the phone between your ear and shoulder while you type and talk. This is a terribly destructive habit over time. To avoid this, invest in a headset, wireless earbuds, or just use speakerphone instead.
Take Breaks from Sitting Often
I don’t sit at a computer for more than 30 minutes at a time. It’s impossible for me to maintain good posture for longer than these 30 minutes. Even if I did maintain good posture for that long, my muscles and tendons would be super tight from the repetitive strain of holding my body in that same position for a long period of time. My breaks aren’t even that long usually. Sometimes, it’s just for a minute to get my blood flow circulating throughout my body. I might only change my sitting position, maybe go from sitting to standing, or maybe move from correct sitting in an office chair to working in a recliner (laptop only).
Finally, Download my Free eBook
If you’ve made it this far, you’ll definitely find my eBook helpful. It’s titled “3 Ways to Improve Computer Posture Immediately!” It’s a pdf document that you can print out and post at your desk. It’s an easy to consume, consistent reminder of which good posture habits office workers should maintain throughout the work day.
You can download your free eBook here.
Take care,
Todd Bowen