this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I found sitting posture and ergonomics always weird. I was always thinking that nobody can sit like that for a long time.

I think the most recent recommendations are to swap your seating position every now and again to not keep load on any single part for too long and to take frequent breaks to walk around.

[–] Carnelian 33 points 11 months ago (1 children)

“The best posture is your next posture”, keep it moving people!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

This is a neat way of putting it, thanks!

[–] givesomefucks 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yep, there's not really any animal that "sits" for a long amount of time.

You're either up and moving around, sitting for maybe five minutes, or just full on flopped on the ground.

Sitting for 8 hours while being physically inactive but still alert just isn't natural for really any living thing. Even ambush predators are laying down while they wait.

That's what great about work from home.

I bounce between laying on a couch, sitting in a comfy chair, an ergonomic office chair at a desk, or standing at a counter.

If I did any of those things for 8 hrs straight, my back would be killing me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I take it you’ve never seen lions. Or pandas.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Lion's sitting is not like our sitting, and ... Pandas? Evolutionary dead-end.

[–] RGB3x3 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I've always thought lumbar support pillows are the most uncomfortable, dumb thing to put in your chair and I have no idea how people sit with those for any length of time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I swear those things have hurt me so much, I have no idea either. There was one that came with a used expensive chair I bought. I thought I was sitting in it wrong or something because I felt like I had severe back pains after just a few days.

[–] soloner 3 points 11 months ago

Ok I agree but there's a caveat. If you've got a gaming setup or other situation where you want your chair to lean back (usually a knob an office chair has), then the lumbar pillow is great for gaming/theater mode

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I definitely also think moving around is the way to go, but in regards to feeling uncomfortable when sitting straight, it helped me to do stretches.

I'm guessing, if you're always kind of 'curled' up, the sinews and muscles and such at the front of your body contract. So, if you then go into the straight position once in a blue moon, everything at the front of your body has to be stretched further than it usually would be, which is uncomfortable.

Well, and if you give it the ol' morning stretch, those sinews and such will be stretched beyond the normal straight sitting position, so that the normal straight sitting position is within the comfortable range...

[–] cenariodantesco 2 points 11 months ago

I used to think and feel the same. That changed when mid pandemic I decided to invest in a good chair, Herman miller embody. It taught me how to sit properly, so much so that even when there's no back rest I sit with my back straight and people on occasion asked me how I do it 😁

[–] snek 47 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Okay, hear me out... I had bad posture all my life. Lots of reasons. I had a really heavy school bag and blame the whole educational system for this shit. Also, my parents never really cared, and most attempts by my mom to make me "stand up straight" were done in a rebuking fashion and I was never responsive.

Fast forward, I'm a grown-up, now with apparent Anterior Pelvic Tilt. For those who don't know what that means, it's when your posture becomes this:

an illustration of a man standing in five different posture positions. The first is sway-back where the man seems to be leaning back his head slightly, not standing up straight. The second one is anterior pelvic tilt where the man is standing with his butt sticking out and with a clear arch in his lower back. The third is thoracic kyphosis, where the man stands with his back arched forward. The fourth is Forward Head, as the name suggests, with that man's head leaning forward, as though he as a "reading neck". Finally, the fifth picture shows the man standing with good posture, with a neutral spine, and no swaying back or forth.

I started off by doing APT exercises to help reduce my pelvic tilt, and that was fine... but as soon as I attempted to "stand properly", I hit that wall of "this doesn't feel right". I could only do it consciously, and often "caught myself" slouching or sticking my butt out, only to try to correct the posture again and again and again.

Anyway, in the end, it worked. I was able to see the results of my APT fading after a few months of doing exercises specifically for that, but things really started to light up a year or two later. I kept correcting my posture whenever I remember, while walking to sitting, and ESPECIALLY when seeing older people with hunched back because I'm paranoid this will be me in the future. I even have one friend in his 60's with an extremely arched back, almost like he stepped out of a fairy tale or movie, and I always wonder whether or not it hurts.

I have a much more neutral stance. My back pain due to bad posture disappeared completely, I only feel it occasionally. My workouts at the gym are better because I can see the posture in the mirror and it's correct and I've been successfully avoiding injury. I also got myself a standing desk and tried to stand for at least half the working day.

It took a lot of repetition and grit to get it done, but now my posture is a hundred times better. It's not "perfect", but at least it feels "natural" to sit or stand properly, the pain is gone... the pain was there because my body had not done that shit for over 25 years. And now it's the other way around: whenever I sway my back or neck forward or stick my butt out, I feel the strain on my muscles and bones.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I had a really heavy school bag

I'm a school bus driver and every so often I have to help a kid with their bag. Holy shit those things are heavy - seems like they weigh a lot more than the kid does. Why the fuck do kids have to carry so much heavy shit? When I was in grade school I didn't even have a bag at all.

[–] snek 10 points 11 months ago

Why the fuck do kids have to carry so much heavy shit?

Because some dumb ass adults decided we need to shove all this knowledge into their skulls whether they like it or not and we will make them carry it around needlessly using this shitty thing called "homework". School should end with the bell. Kids need free time too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Only seems to gets worse when they get older, too. The books just scale with them. Maybe not so bad if you're going back and forth to your locker (is it lighter in countries without lockers?), but I used to have to hoof it to the library in college so I could bum the wifi.

It sucked. If I had to gauge it, that was 25-30lbs of textbook for about 3.5 miles of scorching heat. I also have a very known vice of looking absolutely anywhere except straight ahead of me when I'm out and about.

While I was half-turned, admiring this swallowtail butterfly a family had painted on their mailbox, my foot caught a crack in the sidewalk. Went down, my backpack fell on top of me.

I fractured a rib.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

At least in my experience, sometimes, the kid may not actually have to carry that much stuff at all, and the reason they carry around such a heavy bag may be due to their own poor organization skills.

[–] Omgarm 42 points 11 months ago (1 children)

My body was made to resemble 5 wet noodles arranged like a figurine.

[–] Transcendant 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How do I have the form of wet noodles, with the flexibility of an autumn twig?

[–] Kase 4 points 11 months ago

Maybe 5 barely-cooked noodles?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"Good posture" is a double-edged sword. Humans do not have a spine designed for being bipedal.

[–] Anticorp 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That sounds like something a monkey would say.

[–] hansl 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or a monkeys son. Or a monkeys son’s son. Or a monkeys son’s son’s son. Or…

[–] blanketswithsmallpox 1 points 11 months ago

I am become Monke Sorc. Bananer of worlds.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Oof ow my sciatica

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)
[–] snek 1 points 11 months ago

I never watch gamers streaming but this one made my day. Thank you, stranger. We're all just monkeys in shoes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Every time I try to stand with good posture, it feels fake

[–] Vrtrx 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I try to correct my posture sometimes but everything is just build in a way that automatically makes me hunch over a bit. At 1.91m tall Im not even that immensely tall yet I already am affected by how things are for obvious reasons designed for the standard human. Even while cooking I need to hunch over otherwise I will be uncomfortably far away from whatever Im doing since the countertop just feels too far away to do anything like chopping etc. This applies to other countertops too. And just because I need to rant about the chair in my student accommodation: Fuck the person that decided to equip this student accommodation with a chair where the headrest digs into my shoulders when sitting straight and isnt removable. Am not even allowed to sit straight. (Luckily its just an internation trimester though so Ill be leaving soon but still, I paid way to much money for this crappy accommodation)

[–] Spyro 2 points 11 months ago

As a fellow tall person I have accepted the fact that I will almost certainly have back issues in my 50s/60s as an inevitability. The world is very much designed for the “average height” person.