Whilst we would all like to think that corporations supply employees with quality chairs, like an Aeron or Freedom Chair, the reality is that there are still an awful lot of employers out there who supply staff with lousy office chairs, buying on price with little thought for user comfort.

So if this is you, chances are you are already spending six to eight hours each working day sitting in discomfort with inadequate support, which is not good. Now maybe when you get home, you spend a few more hours at the computer surfing online or working at an online business to escape working for the man.

Well, after the pounding your body has taken at work all day, the last thing it needs is to be given more of the same when you get home. So if you’re sitting in a dining chair or on a breakfast stool or in a cheap office chair, you really ought to think about giving your body a break.

By treating yourself to a new quality office chair, you will find it a pleasure to sit in after that back-breaker at work, and it may even motivate you to work harder on that online business too so you can sit in it even more. Here is a quick summary of some ergonomic office chairs worth considering.

If you ever try buying an office chair online it can be a really overwhelming experience, depending on how you go about it here are some of the things you may find.

You visit a site selling office chairs and you are presented with a scrolling page filled with 100 different chair images and they are all shouting “Buy Me! Buy Me!” and when you get to the bottom of the page it says page 1 of 4 meaning there are 400 to choose from, just how are you supposed to make an informed choice?

Maybe you decide to try Twitter for help, surely there must be someone there who can advise you? Well yes and no, these days there are a ton of spammy tweets from suppliers carpet bombing the same message nearly every time,  hardly fills you with confidence does it?

Add to that the shed load of fake reviews through multiple Twitter accounts sure the headlines sound good – “Why You Need An Ergonomic Office Chair” so you click in hope and what do you find? Well after you wade through the AdSense ads you get to a review where the English seems like it was translated from the original Portuguese by someone whose first language clearly isn’t English and so you end up baling out after the first paragraph.

What about an auction site like eBay, although there are undoubtedly bargains to be had it also is not without its problems. First there is the logistics of getting the chair from one side of the country to the other in one piece should you win it.

Second you can’t be sure of the condition it is in, often the image on the auction is from the manufacturer’s website and even when it is a shot of the actual item photos tend to make things look better than they are in real life, it may be immaculate or it may have 200,000 miles on the clock you won’t truly know until it’s on your doorstep.

One of the most abused words these days is “Ergonomic” especially when used to describe an office chair and the reason is there is no clear definition of what it means, it’s little more than a concept a convenient term for implied quality. It is frequently used by suppliers to enhance often poor quality seating, making it more difficult for genuine products to be heard. Here’s my take on what makes an office chair ergonomic.

So what should you do to find the right chair for you?

I believe there are 5 key features you have to have on an office chair if you insist on these it will narrow the choice down considerably.

Unless you’re an occasional user $100 chairs aren’t the answer, at this price there are just too many components which will be a compromise on quality to keep the cost down, you need to be starting around the $350 level and even then you may not get all the features you need.

Sites like Amazon.com and the better online seating stores have user reviews and this is a great way to gauge an idea of how good something is, however remember office seating is a very personal choice so what may be great for someone else may not work as well for you. For this reason it’s best to choose a site with a rock solid 30 day return policy, this way you get a good opportunity to really test it out to see if it’s right for you.

Lastly, you could always take a look at my office chair reviews section which has a quick summary with links to the full reviews of some of the better quality chairs available.

Although most manufacturers tend to make their chairs with generous sized seats, if you are very tall and or well built you may find your chair is cramped in the length or width leaving you feeling wedged into it.

This makes it very difficult to get comfortable as it restricts your movements and so consequently you can end up sitting in a very rigid way which is bad news for your posture and muscles.

Fortunately, the answer is pretty simple to fix because just as certain manufacturers realized the need to make below average seat sizes for petite users, a number also produce larger than average sizes.

Frequently these are referred to as Big and Tall chairs which is a good thing as it alerts potential buyers who they are best suited for.

A word of caution though, just because a chair is referred to as big and tall by no means makes it a good chair, it’s just a name with no guaranteed level of quality.

Here are some ideas for quality built big and tall chairs from specialist manufacturers.

First, Neutral Posture really understands the sort of chair needed by well built and or tall users and its NP6000 and NP8000 ranges are well worth a look. You could also consider an Aeron it comes in 3 sizes and likely a size C will be best, you can check here on the size chart, the new Embody is another potential answer. BodyBilt is yet another manufacturer to check out

Just uploaded is a review of the Generation by Knoll™ chair which won a NeoCon Gold award for best task chair in Chicago in June last year.

It offers amazing flexibility as you sit in it thanks to advanced plastics more usually found in domestic appliances and cleverly re-used here giving users great support and comfort however you choose to sit.

The seat and back give a far greater range of movement compared to most office chairs and no matter how you sit the memory encoded plastic returns the chair to the upright position once you leave the chair.

Here’s where to will find the full review of the Generation.

A lot of office chairs are just plain big and petite and slim built people find them almost impossible to get comfortable in, for some it’s like having to wear size 10 shoes when you real size is a 6, not very practical.

So why does this happen? Well there are 2 reasons, first people frequently buy chairs on looks and more often than not big looks good, it carries a sense of importance.

Second manufacturers try and produce seats fitting the widest spectrum of users and consequently usually make things bigger rather than smaller. I suppose it makes some sense, a small framed user can always fit into a big chair, whereas a large framed person may not be able to sit in a small chair.

You should never buy a chair which looks big and imposing unless you are the right build for such a seat. As a rule of thumb a suitable office chair should leave around an inch at each side of the seat. So, simply measure the distance across the top of your thighs when sitting and then check it against the seat width and make sure it is a good fit for you.

Some of the better quality seating manufacturers recognize the need for producing chairs specifically designed for a petite office chair user and lighter framed people.

So, if you need a more compact sized seat take a look at HÅG H04, HÅG Futu, Aeron or a Neutral Posture 5000 series as these should work well for you.

In the next post I will take a look at seating problems big and tall users face and how to resolve them.

Remember back in school when you had to write an essay usually it had to be a minimum number of words.

You would sit there thinking how am I going to write that much on this subject? And then after a while you would resort to padding and stuff it full of unnecessarily long sentences and repeat things to get the word count up and make it look good.

Reality was your teacher saw straight through it and you were in trouble for stuffing it full of useless content and told it was all padding.

Guess what a lot of office chairs are just the same, you see them all the time in the discount office supplies stores, great puffed up padded low grade foam and usually with very poor quality leather upholstery. And yet as you try it out sinking into that heap of foam it feels like it’s really comfortable.

And for the first 10 or 15 minutes it probably is comfortable, it is only after you have been sitting in it for a couple of hours comes the realization it’s not comfortable at all.

Why is this? It’s because there is no real structural support it’s a bit like sitting on a giant sponge, it just moves to wherever your body weight is forcing it. Before you know it your body has adapted a most unhealthy posture as your lower back rounds like a medicine ball and the discs in your spine start bulging into a really unhealthy shape resulting in back pain.

It only gets worse because in time what generally happens is the low quality foam flattens out with repeated use and your once fluffed up padding becomes more like sitting on a rock.

There is nothing wrong with padding on an office seat as long as it is of good quality and well designed. There is a world of difference between low grade packing type foam rubber and high quality polyurethane foam carefully sculpted to follow body contours and of high density designed to retain its shape for years. This is why companies like Humanscale are able to offer a 15 year warranty on its Freedom chair.

So don’t get taken in by a so called ergonomic computer chair with loads of padding as chances are the initial comfort it gives will rapidly disappear.

So when was the last time you cleaned or checked your office chair? For a lot of people the answer is can’t remember or worse – never.

It remains a fact the humble office chair is like any other piece of equipment it needs to be cleaned and checked over periodically, nothing too demanding just some common sense things which will help prolong its life.

Here are the things you need to take care of:

• Regular vacuuming
• Cleaning the casters
• Lubricate the gas lift
• Occasional cleaning of the upholstery

You should aim to give your chair a thorough vacuum clean once a week, the upholstery might not look dirty and yet you may be amazed at the amount of dirt it’s concealing.

Try this simple exercise, take off a shoe and give the seat a few smart blows, I bet there were clouds of dust coming out.

The trouble is all those minute particles of dirt act as an abrasive and can shorten the life of the upholstery significantly, so a weekly vacuum will keep them at bay.

Maybe you are finding your chair isn’t moving as easily as it used to, chances are the casters are chocked up with carpet fluff and other grime. Turn your chair upside down and inspect the wheels, if they are full of dust try either vacuuming it out, you may even need to use an aerosol duster which literally blows the dust away.

Once cleaned try spraying with some silicone to keep the parts moving freely, this only needs to be done once or twice a year.

It’s a good idea to occasionally move the seat up and down to keep the gas cylinder in good order. If it’s dry apply a small amount of lubricating oil.

If you have had your chair for some time you may find vacuuming isn’t cleaning the fabric completely and it’s worth using a fabric cleaner to remove stains and ingrained dirt.

Some cleaners although effective can harm the fabric’s natural oils, particularly wool, try and find what the manufacturer suggests is best.

Leather upholstery can become dry and brittle over time, so it’s a good idea to feed and clean it with something like saddle soap. Care should be taken with delicate leathers like nubuck, suede and aniline, leathermagic.com has an excellent range of products designed for this purpose.

Recently my car had to go in to the local auto repair shop for a few days and so they arranged a loan car for me while the work was done.

I arranged to swap cars over Sunday evening to save time and I get to the repair shop early evening in the dark and it’s raining when I pick up the keys and get in the loaner.

Turn the ignition key zip, nada, nothing not a spark of life, so I double check it’s not in gear and all the usual things, still not a thing. In the end I go and knock up the owner, turns out you have to put your foot on the brake to get it to work – doh!

Next, where are the widow wipers, found them pretty quick and then there’s the back screen wiper this takes a bit longer. Not surprisingly there is no gas in the tank so I head off to fill up, cue drama number two how to unlock the filler cap cover, sorted it eventually turns out you need to press the key fob twice to release it. It was only after a day or so and reading the handbook I got everything figured out.

And it strikes me how similar it is with office chairs whether inherited or new.

Here’s a recent tweet from Twitter I saw:

“Guy just delivered my new office chair and had to train me on how to use it. I wish I was kidding.”

It’s like the car isn’t it? We think we know how to drive them, there all the same aren’t they?

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen comments like – “only had the chair 3 years and I finally found out how to make it recline.” Or “help, how do I adjust the height on my office chair” etc.

When you think about how long you spend every day in your office seat it’s surely pretty important to have it set up properly for your personal use.

It’s not surprising people suffer so much back pain and discomfort from their chairs, going back to the car scenario you know what it is like when you get in your car after it’s been in for repair and the guy road testing is a lot bigger or smaller than you, chances are you won’t drive it a yard until you get the driving position readjusted back to your settings.

So, it’s worth taking a little time to check your chair is set up properly for you, do you know what all the adjustments control? If you are unsure and know the make and model visit their website and download details on how adjust it properly.

You might just find you will be a whole lot more comfortable afterwards.

Depending on how much sleep you need there is a good chance you may be spending more time in your office chair than your bed. Certainly, this could be the case during the week maybe not so at the weekend.

Nonetheless it’s likely the amount of time you spend in one or other is fairly similar, either way it is a lot of time to be sitting and surely it makes to invest in a quality office chair to maximize comfort, health and productivity.

Think about it for a moment and ask yourself what did you spend more on your office chair or your bed? Chances are it was your bed and yet people frequently gripe at spending more than $100 on an office seat yet I bet their bed cost well over this.

When you are putting in serious hours doing office work you absolutely owe it to yourself to ensure you have a decent chair, one designed to give you proper support and help you keep comfortable during those long work hours.

And once you buy a good one it will last as long as your bed and you won’t find yourself driving down to the discount office supplies store for another of those $70 close out clunkers every 18 months.

Here’s a useful article to make sure you get the right features and functions on an office chair and there is a video too showing you what really matters.

Chair Giving Back Pain?

The Romans knew a thing or two about getting the best out of their troops, when they were covering long distances they would march for 50 minutes and rest for 10 minutes. They understood if they didn’t allow their bodies time to recuperate exhaustion would soon result.

The principal is exactly the same in the office, those of us spending 8 to 10 hours everyday working in an office chair have to take regular breaks otherwise you just seize up or become wracked with pain from sitting in the same position for too long.

Variation and movement is vital for healthy office working. Keep a close check on how long you have been sitting working on the same task and ideally every 30 minutes or so certainly every hour take a quick break.

Stand up maybe perform some simple exercises to get blood circulating through those seized muscles again.

We weren’t made to sit in a fixed position for long periods so it really is essential to vary your posture regularly if you are going to keep your body fit, healthy and comfortable. There are some simple office exercises you can do which will greatly help your body by injecting movement into your back and neck and help keep you working healthily.