Hi,
I find my current office chair very uncomfortable - and, as I spend far too much time sitting in it, I have been contemplating spending large amounts of cash on an ergonomic chair like the Herman Miller Aeron Chair.
However, I noticed on one of the Swiss Ball manufacturers web-sites a suggestion to use a Swiss Ball as your office chair, because it is good for your posture / core stability. A potentially much cheaper solution with a free core stability workout thrown in!
Has anyone tried this out?
If so, is it comfortable? Is it really feasible to sit on it whilst using a PC all day?
And, less importantly, does just sitting on the ball actually do anything for your core stability?
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There are plenty of chairs on the market that are as good and cheaper than a Herman Miller, you need to try them out to find the right one... main things to look for are adjustability: height; seat plate; back; back support and lumber control... best get back to doing my day job now!!
The reason I thought of the Herman Miller Aeron chair was because I believed it to be the chair I was very comfortable in for six months at a client site. I am not totally sure though because there are a few other mesh chairs out there.
My current Ikea chair / desk combination just seems to aggravate my neck and back however I adjust them so I think almost anything will be an improvement...
I just wonder whether a Swiss Ball is worth trying as a chair, or if it is just a bit of a gimmick.
I have tried a swiss ball in front of my computer at home. Unfortunately for me it sits me much higher than a normal chair would so I am stooping down to reach the keyboard, which probably doesn't do you much good.
I could buy a computer desk to fit the swiss ball, but I cannot afford it!!
Hazard 25 - Using a fitness ball as chair
It's in PDF format, if you can't read that then here is Google's attempt to translate it to HTML.
In summary, they think it's a bad idea, unless specifically prescribed by a doctor.
Actually Fraggle pot and kettle sprung to mind there.
Not sure that I agree with everything it says, but it does bring up some interesting points.
Firstly, that the more reclined your position, the less stress you put on your lower back. My current Ikea desk has a lower platform for the monitor than the keyboard and seems to encourages the complete opposite, i.e. a leaning forward posture, which is the worst possible according to the report.
The ideal seems to be to have the keyboard and mouse just above your thighs (so that your arms are relaxed), to have the monitor raised up so that the centre of the screen is at eye level, and to have a chair that supports your back/neck/head so that you can recline comfortably (plus no clutter under desk that inhibits stretching/moving your legs). The other important thing is to keep changing position every few minutes.
So it sounds like using a Swiss Ball as a replacement for an office chair is probably not a good idea after all, except for perhaps sessions of limited duration.
LC