Our in-house design team thoughtfully crafts every Poppin product to be both beautiful and functional. Our Products, Your Style Our family of products mix, match, and fit together to create inspiring workspaces that express your individuality. 100% Work Happiness Guaranteed When you’re working happy, we’re working happy. Our Workstylists are here for you with answers, advice, and solutions. Replacing your desk chair with a stability ball seems like a good way to sneak in some core exercise while you work. But how effective is it, really?Sitting on a chair requires no muscle activity at all and it actually hurts us for a number of reasons, says John P. Porcari, PhD, FACSM, exercise physiologist at the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse. “For one, people tend to slouch and use poor posture, and sitting in a chair puts your abs on ‘slack’ and decreases core strength. Using an exercise ball counteracts both of these things.” Although you can still use poor posture on a ball, sitting properly requires subtle muscle contractions of the core, hip and leg muscles to maintain balance, which contribute to muscle tone.
Let's Stay In Touch Keep this field blank Enter your email address You may unsubscribe at any time. But there are some drawbacks, says Jessica Matthews, assistant professor of exercise science at Miramar College in San Diego. “Sitting on a ball creates an increased load on the lumbar (lower back) spine and discomfort over time. Prolonged periods of sitting, whether in a chair or on an exercise ball, can also lead to poor body mechanics and posture.” Instead of swapping one for the other, avoid the “all or nothing” mentality so common in health and fitness, says Matthews. “Instead of ditching your desk chair entirely for an exercise ball or skipping out on using the ball altogether, Matthews recommends alternating between sitting on the two throughout the day.” Try 20 to 30 minutes at a time. And be sure to inflate the ball to its proper height; your thighs should be parallel to the floor when you’re seated on the ball. A 45 cm ball works best for women under 5 feet tall;
a 55 cm ball fits women between 5’ to 5’ 7” and a 65 cm ball is best for those 5’8” and over.The bottom line: Sitting on a stability ball doesn’t automatically improve core strength, but when used correctly and with good posture it offers subtle benefits as an alternate desk chair.More from Prevention: 3 Exercise Mistakes That You Make With An Exercise BallTips on Choosing an Office Chair for Bad BacksHelp me not hate my new Aeron chair October 16, 2012 Subscribe Due to long-standing back/shoulder/neck pain, I received an Aeron chair at work a couple of months ago. It has helped in one way (namely, the armrests can be adjusted lower than any other chair I've had, which has helped my shoulders) but otherwise has completely aggravated my lower and mid-back pain. Help me figure out a hack so that I can actually sit at my desk for longer than 10 minutes at a time without going nuts. I know I'm supposed to love this chair, but I don't (except for the aforementioned super-low armrest feature to accommodate my long arms).
I think the problem is a combination of the damn mesh seat (no support for my bony ass) and lack of back support/cushioning (I have the model with the PostureFit -- or, as I like to call it, LackOfPostureFit). No matter how I adjust the height, tilt, tension, etc., my back inevitably winds up feeling extremely tight, and is occasionally in spasm by the time I leave for the day. I have a small lumbar support cushion attached to the chair right now, which helps a little... but one of my problems (according to my physical therapist) is that I actually tend to overarch my lower back, so too much cushioning in that area exacerbates that. I have tried a wedge seat cushion, but it absolutely doesn't work for the seat of this chair (it fits fine on my desk chair at home). Does anyone have any experience with the Stratta cushion for Aeron chairs? At that price, I want to make sure it's likely to help before I cough up the money (or try to convince work to pay for it). A few other points: I do have an ergonomic keyboard and a keyboard tray that are about as good as I'm going to get, so that's probably not an area that can be further improved at this point.
There's not anyone at work who's an ergonomic expert to help me; the facilities guy who delivered the chair was helpful in terms of showing me how to adjust the seat, but beyond that is not really his area of expertise. (Are there freelance ergonomic consultants who you can hire for an hour to come in and evaluate this sort of thing?) I would love an entirely different chair (my eye is on the Steelcase Leap), but I have strong doubts that work will cough up for one. (Does anyone have experience buying a chair like this from an unauthorized dealer? I see them here at about 50% of the retail price, and at this point I'm half-tempted to buy one myself and bring it in to my office, though part of me doesn't think I should have to do this on my dime.)The following is a special guest post by Dr. Nick Askey, Airrosti Provider. Do you ever wonder what sets a gifted Division 1 college athlete apart from a world-class Olympic athlete? Do you ever question how Rich Froning and Iceland Annie are top competitors in the CrossFit Games every year and not plagued by injury?
In my experience with these top caliber athletes, the majority of their success is not due to their superior genetics (even though this cannot be denied as a valuable Ace in the hole), but due to flawless hip mobility and efficiency. A large percentage of the body’s mass is centered on muscles that attach on or around the hip. The muscles that have commanded the most attention in the fitness and medical literature are the 3 hip stabilizers and extensors (Glute medius, minimus and maximus) and the primary hip flexor (iliopsoas). Our “desk jockey” lifestyle in today’s society creates an imbalance of power between the hip flexors and the hip extensors/stabilizers. We spend an average of 9.3 hours per day sitting compared to 7.7 hours sleeping. Sitting tips the scale in favor of the hip flexor, leaving the glutes as the one-legged man in a glute kicking contest. Please don’t let your eyes glaze over in boredom while we go over the bare bones anatomy necessary to explain this imbalance.
The psoas (hip flexor) attaches to the front of the lowest 5 or 6 segments in the low back (lumbar vertebrae) and descends to attach to the front of the hip. The psoas activates to flex the hip (bringing the knee up toward the chest) and to also extend the lower 5 or 6 segments of the low back. Similar to when women wear high heels shortening their calves; we sit with the hip flexed to shorten the hip flexor. When we sit for longer than 20 minute intervals, it is essentially like locking our hips into flexion and our low back into a sway-backed and extended position. This is equivalent to putting vice grips on the muscle that attaches to every bone in our low back and our hip. The tension in the hip flexor may be why it is difficult for you to get up out of a chair until you take three or four steps. It may also hurt for you to lay on your back with your legs straight because the tension on your hip flexor translates to compressive force on your low back’s discs and articulating joints.
If your hips become less flexible than your spine, your spine will be pulled in any direction your hips decide to pull it into. Now let’s talk about the glutes. The glutes, all three layers, were evolutionarily designed to extend the hip, stabilize the hip, sprint and lift heavy objects. They were not meant to be laminated together at one hundred degrees against an office chair, couch or car seat for 16 hours a day. This little conflict prefaces our problem as to why our hips, low back, and knees are in such bad shape. Our brain is our master organ and control center of our bodies. If you are trying to perform explosive hip movements like a snatch, clean or anything else in functional fitness, the brain will limit the maximum force elicited by the glutes until the full hip mobility is achieved. Think of it this way: Your car will not let you drive full speed down the highway with your emergency brake on without some funny smells and repair costs. Similarly, if the body allowed the glutes to contract to full capacity without full hip mobility, you would have some repair costs on an operating table because your psoas would be destroyed.
In order to keep our brain from shutting down our athletic potential, or more specifically our glute potential, we need to work on hip mobility daily. You likely watch television, text, update your Facebook status, and practice countless other relatively unproductive habits on a daily basis. Now you get to stretch your hips daily so you don’t end up crippled. You can even do it while watching TV, texting, and checking in on social media. Let’s break down the squat and how it relates to hip mobility and everyday life. Squatting is nothing more than flexion and external rotation about the hip joint. Any deviation from that will wreck your low back and knees. If you lack true flexion or external rotation of the hip, the body will achieve this through lumbar flexion and rotation. This is the most common mechanism of injury for a lumbar disc herniation. The body may also use medial knee deviation, which is the most common cause of acute knee injury. To simulate poor hip mobility, just picture trying to put on a pair of socks or squat in extremely tight skinny jeans.
That should be enough incentive to reclaim your glutes from their 10 year vacation. Many of you reading this have had a doctor tell you to stop doing squats because they wreck your knees and low back. But I could not disagree more. Here is a great quote from Mark Rippetoe on squatting: “The full squat is a perfectly natural position for the leg to occupy. That’s why there’s a joint in the middle of it, and why humans have been occupying this position, both loaded and unloaded, for millions of years. Much longer, in fact, than quasi-intellectual morons have been telling us it’s ‘bad’ for the knees.” In my opinion there is no faster way to rehab a knee or low back than squatting often and properly under the watchful eye of a quality coach. You should earn the privilege to squat with weight in the gym; it isn’t a right just because you paid. You must possess adequate hip (and ankle) mobility to not wreck yourself to earn your squat pass. To all those doctors advising against squats, I ask the following: