Have a look at a model skeleton. Google it now and select images. What position are they all in?
We’re sitting for longer and longer. When I started work if I wanted to speak a colleague 10 feet away I walked over to him. Now we sit still and email.
Now, in your chair, put your feet together and raise them off the ground. Notice how you feel unbalanced, and you lean back to compensate. OK, we’re exaggerating the effect, but when we sit we’re unbalanced. Our pelvis tilts back, the ligaments in our lumbar spine are exposed and our ‘ancillary muscles’ take up the strain to compensate. We can do this for a bit, but not for 8 hours a day. And most of us are sitting for 12-15 hours a day: Driving, working, driving, television.
When we sit, a person weighing 75kg is exerting 200kg’s of pressure on their lumbar spine.
But sitting is so normal to us, and generally what we do to relieve back pain, we don’t consider it to be the cause. When we stand, the pelvis is balanced and neutral, our core muscles, the pelvic floor are working as they should. When we sit, the base of our posture is the pelvis, and we’re applying constant pressure to the pelvis and pelvic floor, which reduces circulation and increases pressure in a crucial area. This can lead to reduced circulation in the legs, prostate issues for men and muscle weakness in women.
We had a very informative day out at the Salli conference in London on Monday. Salli have been making saddle chairs since 1990 and like all good manufacturers have been continuously developing their products and we now have the 2 part saddles that we display in the showroom today.
We give a lot of showroom space to Salli saddles, because we believe they offer a real and credible alternative to traditional chairs. The open angles at the knees and pelvis don’t exert extra pressure on the lumbar, and the divided seat relieves pressure on the genital area.
Most people will opt for a traditional chair, and a good fitting well made ergonomic chair will certainly help most people most of the time. But if we want to truly remove the core of the problem, a sit stand desk and a saddle chair can’t be beaten.