Your body is not made to stay in the same position for hours on end. To reduce stiffness and promote heart health, you should move around a lot during the day.
Here are five steps you can take to change positions regularly while still being productive at home.
1. Stand Regularly
Try to get up every one to two hours. Take a moment to think about your chances of standing. Maybe you have a standing desk or a tall desk that fits. Maybe you can take a standing phone call using a headset, put your office phone on speaker, or walk around while using your cell phone.
Additionally, you may want to try standing stretches. Finally, you can also try moving away from your desk to sit in another area during lunch. Sometimes, just walking a few feet can break that sedentary routine.
Feel free to use these ideas or think about your schedule to determine when you can stick around while still being productive.
2. Adjust Backrest Angle
You should try to keep your back flat against the backrest. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t move. When sitting on the backrest, you should alternate, every hour, the angle of the backrest between 90 (upright) to 110 degrees (slightly reclined).
Some seats are not equipped with this feature. Check your chair to see if it reclines.
3. Stretch Regularly
Regular exercise can help reduce stiffness. Whether it’s your back, shoulders, quads, or even wrists, there are lots of stretches out there. You can try stretching your back, shrugging your shoulders, or stretching your hamstrings.
Try stretching as tolerated. We don’t want to experience pain or discomfort by stretching. One of the stretches I often recommend is the neck tilt. For neck tilt.
- Look straight ahead while standing
- Keep your left hand behind your back
- Tilt your neck to the right
You can also try tilting your neck to the left.
- Look straight ahead while standing
- Keep your right hand behind
- Tilt your neck to the left
4. Do regular eye stretches
Sometimes, it’s important to take your eyes off the monitor. You might want to try the 20:20:20 rule. A person following the 20:20:20 rule would look away from their computer every 20 minutes to stare at an object about 20 feet away, for 20 seconds.
With 20:20:20, you can relax your eyes and focus on different objects at different distances from your monitor. You can also do the 20:20:20 rule while stretching your neck at the same time.
If you can and without pain, face the monitor and turn your head to the right or left, away from the monitor. Hold that position while doing the 20:20:20 rule. Turn your head to the other side and again look at the surface 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
It’s hard to stretch every 20 minutes, especially for people who are overloaded with computer work. If every 20 minutes is hard for you, try stretching every 40 minutes or every hour. The trick is to start somewhere and stretch your eyes as much as possible.
5. Use Adjustable Footrests
With multiple footrests, you can easily adjust the angle of your knees. Try placing a footrest directly under your feet to maintain a 90 degree knee angle. After an hour in this position, you can place the footrest a few inches forward to adjust your knee to a 110 degree angle.
When computer users alternate between 90 and 110 degree angles, they reduce lower extremity stiffness and encourage more movement throughout the day.
We tend to sit in front of the computer for hours. Believing we can’t change positions while working from home, we rarely move. However, we can move and stay productive. Try stretching your body and eyes.
Move your knees with the adjustable footrest, stand up during phone calls, and adjust the angle of the backrest. We each have different schedules and tasks, especially during this crazy time of COVID-19 and social distancing.
You may not be able to try each of these tips exactly as described. However, feel free to edit it for your personal schedule.
