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.

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.

An area which is often overlooked is office lighting and if poorly set up can frequently create a lot of problems with screen glare.

If your work space is poorly lit you may find you suffer from eye strain, headaches or back and neck pain caused by putting your body in awkward positions because of inadequate lighting.

Where you work near to a window it’s important to have your office chair correctly positioned, you shouldn’t sit with your back to the window as bright sunlight on your VDU can make it unreadable.

Instead, make sure you are facing the window to avoid direct sunlight hitting your screen. Where it is unavoidable and you have to have a window behind you, look to fitting a window blind so you can control the amount of natural light entering your work area.

If your office has fluorescent lighting it’s important to fit a good quality diffuser to the fitting which has been designed to remove glare and spread light evenly over the work area. Where this isn’t possible you will often find adding task lighting can help to illuminate the desk area removing shadows and giving a more even light distribution.

Another way of tackling this problem is by fitting an anti-glare screen to your VDU screen, these simply clip over your display screen and have polarizing filters designed to cut out glare problems.

Steelcase has an interesting article on office lighting and you will also find further information on anti-glare screens here.

Even the best office chairs will give us some discomfort occasionally, especially when you sit in one for hours without getting up for a stretch or break, the human body simply isn’t designed to be locked in the same position for hours at a time.

If you study yourself as you work, you’ll likely discover when pain and discomfort begin to set in, your unconscious reaction is to move and vary the way you are sitting. This is your body’s way of telling you what you’re doing is unhealthy and you need to activate your muscles, get things moving and blood flowing through the arteries.

So, it’s important to make sure you sit in a high quality office chair ergonomically designed to move as you move and give proper support to your body all day long.

With that said, simply having a good chair doesn’t mean you can ignore the way you sit in it and interact with it. You need to address your work properly making sure you have your monitor set at a comfortable reading distance so you aren’t craning your neck forwards as you strain to read the screen.

Slouching is another common bad habit and this is all too easy to slip into particularly with cheaper budget chairs as they tend to force us to sit in a fairly rigid way usually at 90° and slouching is a means of trying to escape this straight jacketed posture.

More and more office chairs are being designed to give people a more open seating position where the angle at the hips is 110° or more. In the past this has presented manufacturers with a challenge because as users recline in their seats they lost visual contact with their screen and reclining tipped them up in the air.

Fortunately, a number of quality products now allow you to recline and stay in contact visually and bodily with your work area. Additionally, they also correctly support the back, neck and shoulders moving as you move allowing you to decide how you choose to sit and this all helps to greatly reduce niggling back pain, aches and discomfort.

Chairs worth taking a look at include the Embody, Leap, Aeron and Futu.

In this final post on choosing a home office chair, it’s time to look at what you need to be sure the new office chair you are about to choose includes as a core set of features and functions.

There are 5 functions you need to insist on if you are looking to get maximum comfort when selecting the best possible chair for your needs and these are:

• Seat Depth Adjustment giving optimal leg comfort
• Adjustable back height to allow the lower back to be correctly supported
• Arm Height Adjustment for easy movement and to minimize the risk of RSI
• Seat Height Adjustment to suit you body height and weight
• Adjustable Tilt Tension allows personal adjustment for individual body weight

The absence of any of these features can often result in pain and discomfort for different parts of you body. This is discussed in detail in a free pdf report 5 Secret Insights for Solving Office Chair Aches, Pains and Discomfort available for download here.

Also Steelcase has some useful tips for the Home Office with related topics you may not have considered.

In the previous post I discussed why people who work serious hours from a home office need to invest in a good office chair. It’s time to decide on how much to spend on your new chair to get the right answer for your needs.

The price of office chairs varies enormously from as little as $30 up to $3000 and more, realistically it’s unlikely you will get a chair with the right features and functions for less than $400.

How much! Well I did stress it was an investment didn’t I?

You probably need to budget between $400 and $800 to make sure you get a good quality ergonomic office chair which will serve you for many years after you have got over the cost.

This may mean saving some of your hard earned cash so you can afford the right chair. The worst thing you can do is decide you can’t afford the cost and go out and buy another sub $100 chair because the aches, pains and discomfort you experience from it will quickly have you regretting your purchase.

So, unless your existing chair is falling apart, suffer it for a little while longer until you can save the money to buy the right one.

I’ll continue this article in my next post by looking at what you need to insist on for that new office chair.

I imagine hardly anyone ever stops to think what their back is worth to them, they all just take it for granted it’s only when it starts to ache most of us are even aware it’s there

Fortunately or maybe unfortunately our back can withstand a great deal of misuse and until it becomes a real problem we will happily go on abusing it.

However, all this misuse does have a price particularly as you get older, it becomes more and more difficult to shake off the aches and pains.

It can creep up on you little by little until you end up with a serious problem which there isn’t a quick fix solution for.

Humans weren’t designed for sitting for long periods of time and so it becomes ever more important to make sure we give our back and body every assistance in sitting in a properly supported dynamic posture.

Guess what? Those $79 chairs at the discount store don’t come close to providing what you need, in fact they will likely do a good job of messing your back up once you sit in one for a few years.

So, to return to my opening question: What is your back worth?

For me the answer can be summed up in one word, priceless. If this means spending several hundred dollars to get the right chair to properly support my back and body then this is a small price to pay.

When you buy a quality office chair look on it as an investment which will last years, while others continue to keep buying cheap chairs and replacing them several times compared to the life of the right chair, they seem destined to keep making the same mistake again and again.

Factor in the cost of regular trips to your chiropractor to sort out your back and you will begin to see the false economy of budget chairs. Here is a quick summary of reviews of quality office chairs designed to look after your back.

When you work at or use a computer for long periods using the wrong type of chair is not a good idea.

I frequently see comments on social media sites where people complain about their back and legs killing them and admitting they are working in a dining room chair or on a sofa.

These types of seat are just plain bad news for working at a computer for extended periods of time and here’s why.

Take dining room chairs, they may keep you upright however they also keep you fixed and rigid and this is very bad news for your posture and back as aches and pains will soon set in.

Also as the chair is likely 4 legged it won’t swivel when you do, so you’ll be under strain as you twist from side to side.

Sofas are probably even worse for working at your computer, typically a laptop. The soft spongy cushions on the average sofa will soon have you slumping and rounding your back opening up your spine and discs which is not good at all.

So, if you are working regularly at a computer in your home office you need to get a proper ergonomic office chair designed for the job, here are the key features you need to insist on when making a choice.

This is the final post in this series of observations on what people really think about their office chair, you can find part one and two here.

So, what can we conclude about people’s opinions of and attitudes towards office chairs?

A lot of people view their office chair as a relatively unimportant thing, despite spending many hours each day sitting in it, its often regarded as a necessary evil rather like a vacuum cleaner when it’s worn out I’ll go and get another one.

A few do see the significance of investing in a quality seat and are fulsome in their praise for the comfort and support it offers.

Judging by those seeking advice on what they should buy many find themselves bewildered and confused on what they should do. This isn’t altogether surprising as the majority of online office chair shopping sites present searchers with a huge array of alternative models to choose from and all this achieves is to create confusion.

Pain is a major issue with office seating and it’s evident that an awful lot of office workers are sitting in very low quality seats which do their backs and bodies no favors at all. And yet all too often they are replacing poor and inadequate chairs with a new version of the same thing, to a degree this may well be due to lack of funds to invest in a proper ergonomic office chair.

When people do decide to get a new office chair it often seems a spur of the moment decision where they call in at the local discount warehouse and pick up a bargain or something that looks good.

Leather Office Chairs continue to be a form of fatal attraction for a significant number of chair users, cheap leather chairs are almost always a very poor investment both from a financial and postural viewpoint.

Some have even given up on a traditional office seat and instead gone over to a ball chair in the hope it will provide the comfort their last chair lacked.

The reality remains that you really do get what you pay for and probably the soundest advice I can give to those needing to replace their office chair is to become aware of the important things to get right and study reviews of quality products.

If funds are tight try saving for a few months and buy a long lasting solution instead of another quick fix that soon disappoints. Lastly, if buying online make sure the store offers a 30 day trial so you can be absolutely sure you picked the right chair, OK you may have to pay return shipping if you do send it back, better that than being stuck with something which doesn’t suit you.

In this second post on what people really think about their office chair it’s time to look at what the different categories of people felt.

It wasn’t all that surprisingy New Chair was the biggest category, those lucky enough to get a new chair often relished in bragging rights and why not? A good number of people funded their own chair purchase, whereas others had the luxury of a new office chair supplied by their employer.

Generally, the comments were positive -

• “my butt is not so sore”
• “really enjoying new chair”
• “new office chair is worth every dollar I paid”

Next, came those seeking advice on where to buy a good office chair from, typical of these comments were -

• “where can I buy a good office chair?”
• “needing to find a comfortable office chair that doesn’t break the bank”
• “looking for a real office chair”

Predictably pain weighed in as the next most common topic, clearly there are loads of people suffering discomfort and sitting in dire office seats as can be seen by some of the comments -

• “oh my back”
• “my back is killing me”
• “my back pain is worse this morning”
• “I’m getting pain again in my neck”

A good number of posters confirmed they were going to get a new chair, with quite a lot of people actively looking for a new office chair and intending to buy one that day.

Perhaps it wasn’t altogether surprisingly most talked of calling in at IKEA, Office Max, Costco or checking Craigslist with the emphasis on getting a bargain or buying on looks rather than selecting a quality product.

In the last category came Ball Chair enthusiasts who had abandoned the mindset of a conventional office chair altogether and resolved to make a fundamental change to their style of office seat, most were positive in their comments -

• “stability ball is much more comfy”
• “fitness ball…is working well”

In the final part of this post I’ll offer my analysis on these findings, watch out for this next week.