How to avoid neck and back pain while working from home

 

Photo by Ron Sinda on Unsplash

When I was growing up, I was told...rather regularly...to sit up straight. Whether it was my parents, grand parents, teachers or whatever, my posture was just never a huge priority for me. Even when I was an adult and out on my own, this didn't really change much.

As I have continued to get older, I have started to realize that perhaps I should have done a better job listening to those admonishments. As it turns out, reality can be a somewhat painful teacher. 

Between slouching in my chair, keeping a wallet in my back pocket (even when I'm sitting), hunching my shoulders and all the other things I was told repeatedly not to do, it finally started catching up with me. Neck pain and low back pain have become a more regular part of my life.

A number of years ago, the world was introduced to the amazing new technology of smart phones. Now, we all have this little gadget that we carry around with us everywhere and we look down at this tiny little screen in our hand. Don't get me wrong, these are pretty amazing things! More powerful than the computers that sent a group of men to the moon over 50 years ago! But they are not without their disadvantages. As numerous as those are from a psychological, emotional, spiritual and mental point of view, I'll just focus on the physical.

We can get into the more technical aspects of this another time, but for now, mere common sense should suffice to understand the postural challenges that present themselves as we have our heads tilted downward so often, looking at this little screen. This has built upon a years-long issue of other posture issues that our mom kept talking to us about.

As if that weren't enough, let me introduce you to the standard work-from-home environment that so many of us have been introduced to since the advent of the corona virus. Many people who used to work in an office, sitting at a desk with a relatively large monitor perhaps set up at eye level (so as not to have to look down at it) and an office chair designed for longer-term support and an ergonomically designed workspace have now been relegated to finding a table at home that they can work on.

I know. Not everyone working in an office had a perfectly ergonomic work space, but a lot of people did. At home, however, far more people are having to work in a cramped space that was not designed for this sort of all-day screen interaction. Even meeting with people has been mostly limited to video conference tools like Zoom or WebEx or the like, where we might have stood up, face-to-face in the past.

This environment is wreaking havoc on our posture. If you are anything like me, you've noticed more back pain, more neck pain, more overall discomfort. This is in addition to the commonly known "COVID 19," referring, not to the virus, but to the amount of weight gained while people have been more or less on house arrest. 

With that, what is a person to do? There are a couple of different things that we can do, moving forward, any they are very much interrelated. Of course, one thing that you can (and probably should) do is to set up your work space to be as ergonomically friendly as possible. You want your work area to promote good posture by doing things such as; ensuring your screen is set at eye-level, keeping your keyboard placed so that your hands can reach it without reaching too far forward, your chair supports a straight-up back, you are able to keep your shoulders back and head up with your feet flat on the floor in front of you.

Realize, however, that just because your work area helps to support better posture, it is almost impossible for it to make you maintain better posture. That is something you will need to do yourself.  This requires two important things. The first is mindfulness. You must be aware of when your posture is sagging or you cross your legs or shift your weight so that you're sitting almost on your hip rather than evenly on your posterior. 

The second thing you will need to improve your posture is sufficient strength. If you've read anything I've written before, you probably had to know that was coming at some point. Much of the struggle people have with maintaining proper posture is that they do not have sufficient strength in all the appropriate areas and muscle groups. This makes it a challenge to stay upright and in a healthy, neutral position because weaker muscles end up getting fatigued more quickly which then leads to slouching, leaning and other such things that ultimately lead to back and neck pain...or worse.

That's where people like me come in. My job is to help you to get stronger. Not just certain specific muscles, but your entire body. I prefer to focus on the body as a complete system. Very rarely do you do anything particularly useful that only involves flexing at the knee. Typically, if you are flexing your knee, you are probably also hinging at the hips and also flexing at the ankle. Your back is probably affected as well. 

That's why I focus on training all of these things together. Your body is a complete system with all the parts working together to produce certain movements. One of the foundational principles upon which training is built is the fact that the body must be trained according to the specific way it is to be used. That is why I train the way I do. When you sit, stand, walk, climb stairs or make your bed, you are using multiple muscle groups across multiple joints that all work together to produce the movement you need in order to do what you need to do in life.

If you have back or neck pain from sitting on a TV tray with your laptop all day and have a hard time keeping your posture upright and anatomically correct, let's get you stronger so that you can hold your body correctly while you work and avoid a lot of the needless pain. All it takes is a bit of effort and some knowledge. You bring the first part, I'll help with the second.