Home Treatment for Repetitive Stress Injury

I got my kneel chair at a thrift store for 10 bucks, and it’s one of my favorite places to sit. Kneeling chairs adjust your position to be more natural on the spine than regular chairs and provide a unique ergonomic relief for the back and hips.

Rather than put all your weight on your tailbone and buttocks, kneel chairs allow your knees and quads to take some of the weight and help you balance. Great if you have back pain, sciata, leg problems, or just feel stiff and uncomfortable in a normal chair.

The kneeling chair can also help put your upper back and arms in a more natural position, especially if you’re pretty short. I’m only five feet; my kneeling chair lifts me higher up above the keyboard so that my arms can type more comfortably.

There are some disadvantages to this chair. It’s really excellent for short periods of time, but I wouldn’t use it as a complete substitute for a regular office chair. After a while my knees get a bit uncomfortable. It provides a different range of motion than a traditional chair, but also restricts your motion in different ways. I recommend it as a wonderful addition to your office, rather than a substitution– I switch back and forth between chairs.

On the other hand, some others –including gamers and programmers–have reported great success using just the kneel chair for hours at a time, without switching to a regular chair. Whether it’s great for you really just depends on your body and your unique situation.

Either way, it’s worth a try — if you have back problems I’d recommend trying one out! I think the new retail price is somewhere between $200-300, but if you’re lucky like me, you can get a used one significantly cheaper. Try thrift stores, Craigslist, or other used options if the price puts you off.

If you want to browse around first for other desk-chair alternatives, the Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety also has a good list of alternate chairs you might want to check out. I will also post more next time, so stick around.

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