S E26: Ep 26 – Do You Have Good Posture? It’s Not Just About Sitting Up Straight

And Clare is a therapy coach. Did I get that right, Clare?

You did.

Clare is a therapy coach and we're going to be talking about posture, the importance of posture, ergonomics and lots of other things that are related to those topics. So to start with, I think you want to ask me a question, Clare.

Well, yeah, I mean, you're an osteopath and a very experienced osteopath, so you must have seen over the years a lot of posture related issues such as rounded shoulders. I'm just thinking, I'm just actually, as I say posture, I'm just about to adjust my own posture.

It's one of those words that makes you think about how you're sitting. So yes, you must have seen lots of posture related problems over the years.

I have seen a lot of posture related problems over the years.

And before we get into this, what I was going to do was just talk a little, a little bit about some stats that I have managed to collect about that very subject.

The government being the government have done a lot of studies on what they call work related musculoskeletal disorders and they have some very interesting stats that could be posture related.

But is it as important as you think?

Okay, so here's a question for you. What does good posture look like to you?

Right. Okay. I'm going to give you the dictionary definition of posture and then I'll explain it in English.

So the dictionary definition of posture is how the body is positioned when sitting, standing or moving, involving the coordinated interaction of your muscles, joints and nervous system to maintain your balance and stability against gravity. Does that answer your question, Clare?

Absolutely, yes.

I have no idea what it means, but actually, let's talk about how it affects you, me and the people that are watching or listening to our podcast.

Yes.

So posture has been made out to be the bad guy and we have good posture, we have bad posture but we don't seem to have anything in between.

Now, most People's definitions of good posture is head up, shoulders back, chest out, straight back, what soldiers used to do, or soldiers still do, which is called the military brace position. So the. There's very few curves in that. It's shoulders back, pinched, shoulders back, chest out, head up, as upright as possible, etc. Etc.

Now that is considered to be good posture. Bad posture is seen as.

And if you're not watching the video, you won't appreciate this, but basically you're slouching in the chair, got your arms down by your sides, backs rounded, etc. Etc. That is considered to be bad posture. In my world, there is no good or bad posture. We are creatures that are designed to move.

So, you know, even if you are in what we call what could be considered bad posture, even if you're slouched and then slumped and you're watching the TV and you've got a remote in your hand, that's actually okay as long as you're not in that position for too long. We are creatures that are designed to move. Now, if we go back from an evolutionary perspective, the human body is designed to save energy.

So although slouching and slumping and all of those things don't look great in reality, back in ancient times, between going out and hunting, fishing, shoot, whatever we were, whatever they were doing, we rest.

And to get to conserve the maximum amount of energy, you basically just want to switch those muscles off so you're relaxed, so the shoulders are allowed to round, your head is allowed to come forward a little bit. That's all fine, because what your body's naturally doing is conserving energy.

Back then, there'd be bursts of activity, followed by cooking, celebrate, whatever it is, and then we just rest, saving, conserving energy for the next time we go out and hunt and fish and whatever it was. So we're designed, between bouts of activity, we are designed to save energy. So that slouching posture is actually okay.

The difference these days is that we slouch and then watch a bit of TV and then we go to bed, and then we get up in the morning, and then we get in the car and all get on the train or we commute and then we work in an office for six, seven, eight hours a day or whatever it is, and then we get. And then we commute home, rest, rinse and repeat. So we spend a lot of time not expending energy. Yes, there are jobs that are active.

Yes, there are people that work in factories. There are people that have manual jobs. There are landscape, garden, Whatever it is. So those guys are quite active.

Yeah.

But again, do they have good or bad posture? Yeah, you know, it's posture is, however you are at the time is, is my view on this.

It's whatever, whatever position you adopt at the time, whether to do your job, to just relax, whatever it is. That to me is posture is there and I don't think there is bad posture.

I think whatever posture you have, whatever position you're in, don't be in it for too long.

Yeah.

So the key then I take from that is actually we need to build the activity between those times where we're legitimately resting and in the modern day world, and this is probably the whole birth of the ergonomics industry, which I know you're going to come on to, is this has all been built up because they are designing desking, chairs and whatever to give us good posture, their definition of good posture while we're at work, whereas we're not actually being what you would described as active. Certainly my job isn't active.

So my only real knowledge of what I would say is good posture is I've done a lot of ballroom dancing and I've seen posture is huge. If anyone's ever watched Strictly, they're always talking about good posture and not so good posture.

And that to me a bit like the military brace position.

I'm thinking particularly ballroom rather than Latin dancing is very much exactly chin parallel with the floor, shoulders back, very straight, very straight back. But it does take a lot of energy and that's before you even move. So I absolutely get your point about it's much easier just to slouch and.

That'S what we all do.

So when I get somebody coming to see me with a work related musculoskeletal disorder, there's got to be a better way, an easier way of saying it than that.

But when I get somebody to come to see me with that, particularly if it's related to office work and a lot of it is, my advice to them is always a set up your workstation for you. So office furniture is designed for 85% of the population, the average.

If you are taller than average or if you are shorter than average, office furniture is not designed for you. So if you're shorter than average, ideally you want to have your feet flat on the floor. If you're shorter than average, get a footrest.

You may also want to get a slightly lower desk, adjust the monitor, that sort of thing.

I mean, what I can do is I can put in the show notes after this, some ideas, some advice about how to set up your workstation, whether you're working in an office environment or whether you're working at home. So yeah, there are things that you can do to make your, to make your workstation work for you.

If you're taller than average, you probably want a height adjustable chair. Well, no, you definitely want a height adjustable chair. You probably want a height adjustable desk as well.

So there are positions that will make you, which will make things more comfortable for you and it will mean you'll be able to stay in that position for longer. But what I always say to people apart.

So the second first thing I say to people is set up your workstation as optimally as you can and I give them advice on what they need to do for that. And then the second thing I tell them to do is to take regular breaks away from your desk.

So, you know, ideally every 30, 45 minutes you want to be getting up and having a little stretch or taking a toilet break or going to get a coffee or just move, you know, if you have, if you have a job which involves making phone calls, make the phone calls while you're standing, you know, those sorts of things. Really, really simple things that people can do.

Ideally every 30 to 45 minutes, realistically every 45 minutes to an hour, but change position, you know.

So you, as you rightly say, I have a bit of a thing about ergonomic furniture that's a big, I'm not a big fan of ergonomic furniture because a lot of it is double the price of any other furniture you can get. Whereas realistically I, when I was working from home, I, I had an office chair which cost me £30 and lasted me 10 years.

It was a second hand chair, but it was height adjustable and first thing I did was take the arms off it. But that's a whole nother story which won't get into. But yeah, you do not have to spend a lot of money.

You can spend, you know, over a thousand pounds on office chair. You can spend more than that on a, on a desk.

But actually it will not allow you to spend any more time sat down at that incredibly expensive desk with that incredibly expensive ergonomic chair than if you'd bought one much cheaper that did the same thing. As long as it's height adjustable, as long as got a little bit of giving in the, the seat back, that's fine. That's all you need.

Because it's not about the furniture you're sitting on, it's about how Much time you spend at that piece of furniture that you're sitting on. So, yeah, so there's this massive industry worth billions around selling you things that you don't actually need.

And this is why I'll never be working for, for a company that makes ergonomic furniture, because I couldn't honestly sell it to people, because, like I said, you don't actually need it. If you have an understanding of what the requirements are for a person to sit at a desk, that's all you need to understand.

So my key takeaway from all of this is actually just move more. Just set, set your watch, set a timer, make sure that I, my watch does go off and tells me to move or stand up and I just go dismiss.

But actually don't dismiss it. Just get up, walk around the room, take five. And that actually taking five is an incred. Incredibly good thing.

Very simple thing we can do for our mental health as well. When we're at work, just taking five.

Minutes out, it's like hitting the reset button and it allows you to clear your head, have a reset and come back and sit back down. And that's the other thing about taking that break is you can be sitting in the perfect position on your perfect chair at your perfect desk.

But as I was saying about the body likely to conserve energy, at some point, your head will slowly come forward, you slowly round the shoulders, et cetera, et cetera. So getting up, going off and doing something else for five minutes and coming and sitting back down again is like hitting a reset.

All your muscles joined out.

Yeah.

Okay, change your position, come back, and then you can do that again and you can continue doing that through the day. So, yeah, there's, it's. So getting up and moving is more than just changing position.

It's also like a bit of a reset and you're up and a refocus on the eyes as well. That's another thing. But we haven't really got time to go into it.

That is a whole, whole other area.

I mean, one of the things I've experienced and certainly in, in an office environment is there is the direction of travel is remote working, has been since the pandemic, but also hot desking.

And I know for myself, when I go into the office, I'll sit down at one desk and the desk, the monitors are too low and the desk is too high and the seat is set round the wrong way. And then I'll go and work at another desk and it'll all be completely different.

So I think we need to be aware that when we're as employers, that either. And the other thing as well I've observed is people.

Hot desking is great in principle from an employer perspective, but actually people like their own desks. They like their own stuff around them. They like to have their own drawers and their photographs and whatever.

So, you know, we've got to take that into account.

And from what you're saying, actually it's a better, better for us in terms of posture because we can actually tailor everything to what we need rather than who's going to come and sit at that desk next.

It's exactly that. It's your space, it's your territory. You set it up how you like.

And this is one of the things, this is one of the flaws in hot desking is that you're always sitting at somebody else's desk, you know, unless you stake out your own territory, which you're not allowed to do. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of hot desking for all the things we've talked about in terms of setting the desk up that's optimal for you.

And it's probably worth mentioning as well, the working from home thing.

And not a lot of people know that if you are, whether you're working in the office or working from home, your employer has a duty of care to make sure that your home setup is optimal in the office. It's easier and it's more obvious, but they also have a duty of care to you when you're working from home.

So, yeah, it's not, you know, and there are people who do not have the space to be able to set up a dedicated desk and height adjustable chair.

And I know because I've seen people that have been in that situation, all that they can really do is to, is to set it up as optimally as they can for them. If you're working from the sofa or something else like that, then you just need to change, make sure you change that position more often.

So you might do half an hour, get up, make some, make self tea or make some phone calls or something like that. But it's being mindful of the fact that we are designed to move. So move.

Yeah, I think that's the, that's the key thing in all of this.

And I know that during the pandemic we were literally overnight forced to a lot of us to work from home and you know, for quite a number, you know, that was okay. We had a home office already set up and it was just, you know, we, we did it. But For a lot of people, that wasn't the place.

They were in shared accommodation. They were literally sitting at the end of the bed on the dressing table.

I actually had a flip top desk in the kitchen, so it meant that I was never away from work. Psychologically, I could never shut that off.

So although I think things have improved, obviously, since the pandemic, and I think employers are a lot more aware of that duty of care. But it's. I think it's here to stay.

Absolutely, yeah.

So we, we need, we need to pay attention to it and make sure that people are looked after and feel looked after when they're at home.

And this is the thing, and this is why we are having this conversation.

I can talk about things from the physical aspect, but from a mental health aspect, because as we've said before, you cannot have good physical health without good mental health. You cannot have good mental health without good physical health.

So it's not just a case of having the right furniture or moving around more, it's also a case of having an environment that you feel comfortable in.

Yeah.

And I think for, particularly for neurodiverse individuals, they are much more sensitive, and I've used that word really carefully and very respectfully, to the environment.

There's various sensory issues, so things like loud noises, bright lights, these all come into play, and also noise around, because that's the other thing is if you work in an open plan office, you can hear other people's conversations and it's just human nature to get distracted. Whereas if you need to be in zone and need to work, then actually sometimes it's better to have a dedicated space to be able to do that.

And I know that quite a few of my clients now use what's called loop earphones or EarPods, which are great because they can effectively cancel out the surrounding sign, but you can still, if someone walks up to you, you still know that they want your attention.

And so they've been, you know, they're just one of those little life hacks which are great in terms of helping you modify your environment and get it to be the best working environment for.

Yeah, I mean, what might be useful then is if you have a link or a source for those loot buds, then we can put something in the show, notes that people are interested, they can go and have a look and see, see if it worked for them. So I think we've pretty much covered everything. It.

The conversation hasn't gone quite where I thought it was going to go, but so we started off talking about posture. We ended up talking about ergonomics and loop earbuds, but again, as I always say, everything is linked and related.

So thank you for that input, Claire. And yeah, hopefully you got something from that. Now you know that plusjet is not just about how you stand, it's about how you move.

And yeah, so, yeah, so that. That ends another episode. Hope you enjoyed it. If you've got any questions, drop them in the comments.

If you liked the show, please come back, give us five stars because we deserve it. And yeah, there will be more to come. Thanks for listening and we'll see you at the next one.