Sitting versus standing is now a common debate in our workplace and the media. We’re beginning to see a positive shift in businesses as they take on the responsibility to implement systematic ergonomic improvement processes, removing risk factors that lead to musculoskeletal injuries and allowing for improved human performance and productivity. So how can you help yourself?
One of the main concepts of reducing postural loading pain is time spent. For an organic structure such as your body, time spent in one position will result in overloading of tissues, stiffening of some structures and weakness in others, all this resulting in pain! Postural loading pain!
This then raises the concept of stiffness more recently coined mobility or a lack there of! Poor mobility or range of motion of a joint will require other joints or structures to overcompensate in order to perform an activity or task. A classic example of this is when people have poor mobility in one or both hip joints and they attempt to pick something up off the ground and strain their back. The back has had to move to far straining the tissue due to poor hip function, resulting in that classic non-specific back pain, inevitably presenting you to your Physio.
Then there is weakness. Our sitting society wears the cost of a weakened core, back muscles, glutes, shoulders and neck stabilisers, not to mention the effects on your cardiovascular and all-round wellbeing.
