Despite all the new advances in technology one of the key causes of neck pain when using an office chair doesn’t look like disappearing anytime soon.

Yes the humble telephone incorrectly used is capable of creating a lot of neck problems both now and in the future.

How does this happen? You see it all the time, people trying to take calls and write at the same time, what do they do? They wedge the phone between their ear and shoulder and contort their neck into a horribly unnatural position, this places excessive strain on the neck and shoulder muscles as well as the vertebrae in the neck.

Invariably people always take calls on the same side so they don’t even give their neck a chance to balance up the distortion this creates.

And the problem has got worse as mobiles are more commonplace and smaller than ever and so encourage this bad habit.

At least with a hard wired office phone it is quick and natural to switch to speakerphone and make writing notes and taking the call easier, although for confidentiality and annoying colleagues nearby in a large office this isn’t always practical.

Fortunately many modern mobiles let you take calls via a speaker and they nearly all come with a cheap earpiece and microphone so there really isn’t any excuse for sitting screwed up in your office chair cradling your phone and trying to take notes at the same time.

And if the supplied earpiece and mic are really poor replacing them with a better quality headset with built in microphone won’t cost you that much.

So, if you are a neck cradler when taking calls you need to break the habit and consciously become aware of when you are abusing your body like this. Fortunately if you do it frequently enough your body will tell you by inflicting a good dose of neck pain on you.

Break the habit now before you do any lasting damage and start running up chiropractor’s bills, for as the years go by you’ll be glad you did.

I’m often amazed at the casual attitude people take when buying a new office chair you see frequent posts and comments on Twitter and FaceBook about how they plan to call in at the local office warehouse on the way home to pick up a new office chair, treating it as though they needed some Corn Flakes for breakfast tomorrow.

OK if the chair is only for occasional use I guess it may not matter a whole lot and yet more often than not these people are full time desk chair users who desperately need something which will give them good support and comfort for the hours and hours they sit every day.

This laid back approach usually only results in disappointment within a few weeks as it quickly becomes apparent what they bought is actually a low quality seat, made to fit a price band so what seemed like a bargain quickly becomes an embarrassing liability.

So What Would Be a More Effective Way of Buying a New Office Seat?

It all begins with some research so check manufacturer’s web sites and find out if there is a local office seating specialist you can visit and discuss your requirements with friendly, knowledgeable people.

Good ones will be happy to give you an approval period after buying to return the chair if it proves unsuitable. Often they will loan you a chair to try for several days to make sure it’s right for you, because it really does take a few days to be sure.

Alternatively, find a good online store which has a good returns policy so you can be certain the chair is comfortable and supportive, the better ones will generally give you 30 days.

You will probably end up spending more via a chair specialist or online however you will quickly forget the extra cost as you appreciate the increased comfort and productivity it gives you. Here is a quick summary of quality chairs worth short listing.

If you are finding your office chair isn’t as comfortable as it used to be then maybe it’s time to take a quick look at some key adjustments, especially if you haven’t checked them recently.

Seat Height Adjustment

When your seat height isn’t set up correctly it can cause you a good deal of discomfort although it shouldn’t be necessary to change it once you have it set properly, sometimes it gets changed without you realizing it. Maybe someone else used your chair and altered the height, how annoying is that!

Using the paddle lever or button take the time to set your seat’s height so your feet are squarely on the floor with your thighs facing slightly downwards when sitting.

You never want to have your feet dangling in the air because it puts excessive pressure on the underside of you legs. If you are short built and find difficulty with this you may need to think about buying a footrest to correct it.

Seat Tilt tension

Hopefully your chair includes this adjustment, generally speaking it most commonly adjusts using a tension knob under the front of the chair. Turn it inwards to increase tension and outwards to decrease it.

When this is properly set up you should be able to recline with relative ease in your chair with the back moving easily as you lean back on it. If you find it’s difficult to do this or the back offers little or no resistance it’s definitely time to check your settings.

Back Height/Lumbar Support Adjustment

Your chair will probably have a height adjustable back unless it’s a high back model which may be fixed and yet hopefully includes some form of lumbar support adjustment.

Most back height adjustment is either by a knob at the rear of back support stem or it may have a ratchet adjuster where you need to reach behind you and slowly lift the back up and down into preset positions. This may also involve pressing buttons to do this.

Try and set the back or lumbar support so that it is giving you good lower back support as this will help prevent slouching as well as encouraging your back to adopt a healthier more upright position.

So, why not check these 3 simple adjustments now, you may well find comfort levels improve significantly as a result.

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.

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.

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.

Following on from my post yesterday about giving your loved one a new office chair or have them buy one for you, it’s time to look at what is available.

Today we look at HÅG of Norway, I call it the world’s best kept office seating secret because it should be far better known than it is and has been turning out top quality chairs for years.
Truth is it is well known and respected in Europe nonetheless in the US it is often overlooked and hasn’t the same reputation, don’t underestimate HÅG because it produces a host of excellent products.

Follow these links to find out more about what’s on offer.

• HÅG H04 Chair
• HÅG H05 Chair
• HÅG Futu Chair
• HÅG Capisco Chair
• HÅG Balans Kneeling Chair

Tomorrow it’s the turn of the world’s largest office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, catch you then.

Thanksgiving is almost upon us and it won’t be long before it has come and gone. Soon you will be enjoying a Turkey feast and maybe eating a bit more than you should before curling up in front of the TV.

Quite possibly your mind will wander and start thinking about Black Friday shopping and the weekend ahead turning to thoughts about the presents you could buy for your loved ones and what you would like to receive from them.

All too soon it will be back to work and for many that is when the other Turkey in their life may rear its ugly head.

I’m talking about the humble office chair where many of us spend literally nearly half our lives sitting, – it doesn’t fall far short of the amount of time we spend sleeping in our beds.

And there’s the odd thing, most of us will happily spend good money on a comfortable bed and yet when it comes to office chairs we baulk at spending serious money on one. Strange.

Sitting day in day out inevitably takes its toll on our bodies and for people who don’t have a proper ergonomic office chair results in back pain, posture problems and distracting discomfort.

Cheap chairs are built around one thing – price, consequently the components used on them will always be a compromise, things like low quality foam which soon goes as flat as a pancake. They simply aren’t capable of providing users with the correct level of support and comfort for any length of time, with the inevitable result that back ache quickly sets off.

As the years roll on the problem simply gets worse and often results in chronic conditions needing expensive services from a good chiropractor or back specialist.

So why not invest in a proper ergonomic office chair this Thanksgiving? It may well be the best investment for you or a loved one’s comfort and support when spending those long hours slaving away at the computer.

Sure it’s a fair initial outlay and yet when you appreciate it will likely last for at least 10 years or more the lucky recipient will thank you many times, it will be one present they or you will really appreciate and won’t easily forget.

First, a word of caution don’t rush out to your local office supply store thinking you will find what you need because they have got more Turkeys than you can shake a stick at, seriously.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have a true office seating specialist nearby the best way to get a good office chair is from an internet specialist. However it needs careful planning we’ve all seen those sites with pages showing hundreds of chairs, makes the eyes glaze over how do you know which one to pick?

The answer is by being selective, you see most chairs don’t have the essential features needed and so can be eliminated straight away. Here is an article explaining the 5 must have features for a quality office chair.

To make things simpler in sifting turkey chairs from the real McCoy I will be adding several more Blog posts discussing suitable models and manufacturers worth looking at to steer you in the right direction. Watch out for the first of these tomorrow.