Kneeling Chairs
If your job or your hobbies for that matter require you to sit for any length of time and this aggravates your back pain you might want to take a look at a kneeling chair.
After searching high and low for a supplier in our area we finally found one last week and I can tell you that the difference in comfort levels compared to a normal chair is like night and day.
Call me slow but what I didn’t realize was that these chairs are readily available on the net and even with the cost of shipping I could have had one for a lot less than what I ended up paying from a local supplier! One slightly expensive lesson learnt.
When I first spied the chair in the shop I thought that there is no way that thing could be comfortable! The angles look all wrong and as for the back support, I thought there would be no way that I could spend five minutes in it let alone a few hours.
But I’m happy to report that I couldn’t have been further from the truth. After the hour long drive to get to the store my back was already sore and sitting in, or on depending on which way you look at it, the kneeling chair gave almost instant relief to the bottom half of my spine that was feeling the pressure of the drive.
When sitting up nice and high in the chair you can feel that the spine and surrounding muscles are relieved of the majority of weight that they are carrying and in my case at least I can feel that my stomach muscles are getting a bit of a workout holding my upper body up straight, instead of my back muscles which of course get very sore after doing this for even a short period of time. I have also found that by removing the back support section my stomach muscles get more of a workout which is good for me as the back muscles have been doing all the work for a long time.
There is one downfall that I have noticed over the last week with this particular chair, it isn’t fitted with castors and only has wheels that allow forwards and backwards movement which can be a bit of a pain when your desk is more than six feet long and you usually end up with stuff from one end to the other!
Of course the majority of the cheaper and more readily available kneeling chairs on the net are fitted with multi-directional castors…. strike two for not using my brain.
Also something that should be noted, the muscles in your legs provide a lot of the upper body support when using these chairs and they do get a bit of a workout. For the first few days I found that after long periods on the chair my back pain was okay but my legs felt like I’d just done a few laps around the block! Not a bad thing considering my lack of activity over the last three years and after a few days I did get used to it.
So that basically sums up my experiences with kneeling chairs so far. Although there is a short period of getting used to them the relief they provide to your back is simply sensational. I don’t understand why more offices and the like don’t encourage people to use them, I am sure this would cut down on people suffering from back aches and pains.
From what I have seen the majority of the chairs available over the internet don’t have the back support piece included and to be honest I don’t see this as a necessity. I have removed mine as I am keen on further strengthening my stomach muscles and have not noticed any ill effects.
More information on the popular ‘Jobri’ kneeling chair and how to order one can be found HERE
Craig
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