Here’s a great resource I came across recently 50 Simple Techniques for Staying Fit While Stuck at Your Desk which contains links to a wide selection of ideas for keeping fit when working in the office.

The site includes 50 useful links under 3 broad headings. General Techniques for Office Fitness covers sites with advice and tips on exercising in the office as well as some sites advising on healthy eating when stuck in an office.

The next category, Best Tools for Office Fitness covers things like Ball Chairs, Exercise Tools, Chairs and Back Supports.

Finally there is a Videos section with links to show you how to exercise, as well as Yoga and Pilates routines for the office, even how to massage away a headache.

There is a total of 50 links to some excellent sites and each link comes with a brief summary explaining what the site is all about.

All in all these Office Fitness Ideas will provide you with an excellent compilation of useful sites to explore on the area of healthy office working.

Would you give your office chair the thumbs up? Does it make you feel happy, unhappy, comfortable, uncomfortable, is it worn out or broken? I set out to find the answers on what people really felt about their office chair.

I needed valuable topical, interesting and spontaneous opinions which captured just how people thought about their office chair as they are working in it. I decided the ideal way to investigate this would be through social media comments.

So, I analyzed key posts on the topic over a one month period. I discarded all the usual laugh at me stuff like chair races, running over toes, cats sleeping on chairs and worse, as they didn’t really contribute to how people felt about their office seat and was able to glean some great takeaways about what mattered most.

In all I discovered 165 relevant posts which were then separated into 5 broad categories and are listed below together with the percentage each category represented of the total comments.

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In the second part of this article we get down to the key issues of what people had to say about their office chairs, good and bad. Look out for this next week.

Maybe you’ve wondered whether a Ball Chair is right for you, although they’re generally fairly cheap you don’t want to find that it doesn’t work for you.

Well, there is a simple and inexpensive way to find out, ball chairs are all basically based on an inflatable exercise ball.

You will find that you can pick up an exercise ball for less than $15 on sites like Amazon, so for a small outlay I suggest buying one to evaluate if it’s right for you, choose a 650 mm diameter ball.

There are some who actually suggest using an exercise ball as a chair, but I wouldn’t recommend this for long term use.

However, it’s a great way to test the concept for a small outlay. Start by sitting on it for short periods of time and see how you get on, you’ll need to learn how to balance on it properly and if you discover you can manage it OK , then a full Ball Chair should be suitable for you.

You can find reviews of Ball Chairs here.

There’s a lot of interest these days in alternative seating like Ball Chairs.

Ball Chairs are great for improving your sitting posture as they make you sit dynamically, you can’t just slob around on one, as you’ll likely end up on the floor!

Whilst some use them as their main chair, a lot of people find they have difficulty in sitting all day on a Ball Chair. This is highly likely to be the case for those trying to use an exercise ball as a chair.

So, it’s probably best to look on a ball chair as an additional seat that you use for part of the day to give your body relief and variation from your normal seating position.

I’d recommend that you keep your existing chair and see how you get on with your Ball Chair, that way you can either use it full time or occasionally depending on how you find it.

I suggest that you go for a proper Ball Chair rather than an exercise ball, you can find further details on popular ball chairs here.

Ball chairs continue to be a popular alternative to conventional office seating, people who have back problems often find relief in this alternative form of seating.

Although, I’ve covered a number of different models in the Stools and Ball Chairs part of the main website, the BalanceBall® is one that I have yet to consider.

It works on the same principle as other models of Ball chair in that it encourages you to sit healthily, that is “active sitting” you won’t doze off in this type of seat it’s designed to keep your back active and healthy.

The chair is available online for Gaiam.com and Amazon.

I’ll be adding a full review of the product to the Ball Chair review section of the site shortly.