A Tale of Two Chairs

I was scrolling a certain social media feed and I saw a photo of two chairs. Chair One - ordinary wooden chair with a flat seat, similar to those that my grandparents had in their kitchen. And next to it Chair Two - a new, shiny, springy, adjustable, mesh-y ergonomic chair (in an absolutely adorable and eye-catching colour, I must admit) that was celebrated because it was supposed to save its owner from lower back issues, tight hip flexors from sitting for hours a day, and the consequent not being able to walk properly and lots of pain (quoting their words almost verbatim). Now, if I was Chair Two and I was expected to help someone by them simply sitting on me, I would have felt a lot of pressure despite all the springs!

So I decided to weigh in and balance that inequality out, and also save the dignity of Chair One by pointing out the obvious (for me) fact that what makes any chair good is how you use your body while you sit on the chair. Which in turn, and a bit annoyingly, passes the responsibility of how good the chair is to your body and you, rather than the chair.

Sigh.

The "comfort" of an ergonomic chair is due to the fact that it supports your weaknesses by helping out your in-built support system (aka your skeleton, muscles and neural connectivity), only to make it inefficient (needing to rely on that support and hurting or otherwise causing you grief if it can't) in the long run. Not necessarily what you would sign up for when you think about it like that, isn't it?

I know it almost seems counter-intuitive at first, because when we think of "ergonomic" we are left with the impression that there is this one ideal position of the body, and then there are chairs and other gadgets that help you achieve/maintain this ideal position. If you only know what they are and possess them, you will all live happily ever after!

However our bodies are alive and very much not static, and although there are less damaging static positions, sitting or not, what we really need is to change those positions and to use "more" of our bodies, more often. We need to align our bodies biomechanically better and change positions regularly in order to expose different joints and muscles to different loads, requiring different adaptations, and thus making us equipped to handle more different positions, chairs, and other occurrences with more comfort, naturally.

There is nothing wrong with an ergonomic chair (or any chair) per se, but in the equation Human Body+Chair, Chair is one variable, and Human Body is in fact an array of many, MANY, variables, and has a much greater impact on the outcome. Thank goodness for that, as it means that you can change your "chair outcome" with some simple interventions.

For starters, get up every 30 minutes for 5 minutes, and I promise it will make a greater difference to your hip flexors than any new chair would.