If you’re sat on a chair all day, then you’re putting your health at risk. It may not seem like the case, seeing as you aren’t doing much at all.
How can sitting down damage your health?
Well, it’s all to do with your posture and the lack of muscle activation that comes with sitting on a desk chair. Most people that sit at a desk all day tend to have poor posture.
They round their back and put too much pressure on their lumbar spine. By slouching forward, they also create a rounding of the upper back which causes lots of tension in the thoracic spine.
To put it simply; you can end up with serious back pain.
Also, the act of sitting in a chair requires no muscle activation whatsoever. In fact, the seated position causes your ab muscles to become inactive.
This weakens your core, which can have a bearing on the rest of your life. We need our core to help take pressure off our back when we walk or stand still.
A weak core isn’t active, and leaves all the work to our poor lower back. The result of this is, you guessed it, more back pain.
When you sit in a chair all day, every day, these problems can become quite serious and permanent. So, it’s important that you learn how to improve the way you sit. There’s one quick fix that helps you do this; sit with a ball chair. Swap your desk chair for an exercise ball and you’ll notice a big difference.
Studies have shown that sitting with a ball chair makes your body function in a different way. Sure, you can still sit with poor posture and slouch forward. However, when you sit with good posture, you see a massive difference.
Sitting up straight on a ball requires your core to activate and put in some work. Our ab muscles start firing to help us maintain good balance and not fall off the ball. This helps take some of the stress off of our lower back and also helps strengthen the core.
Over time, you can build up core strength, and this helps improve your posture.
However, don’t get ahead of yourself and throw away that desk chair of yours. Although an exercises ball can help stabilize your core, it has some drawbacks. It’s impossible for your core to keep firing throughout the day. Eventually, your muscles get tired and the stress goes back to your lumbar spine. It’s recommended that you sit with a ball chair for short periods throughout the day for best results.
Now and then you should get out of your desk chair and sit on a ball for half an hour or so. I also suggest that you walk around for a bit and do some stretching whenever you switch between the two. Make sure you stretch your hip flexors and lower back as these are the two areas that get very tight when you sit.
Combine a ball chair with a stretching routine to improve your posture and sit better.