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Although there are many health benefits associated with working from home, good posture isn’t typically one of them. If we’re not hunching over a keyboard that’s far from the perfect height, we’re straining our necks to use a laptop perched on our knees or propped up on cushions.
Thinking about how ergonomic your home set up is might seem like a minor concern right now, but left unchecked, poor posture while working from home can lead to chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) problems, including back, neck and wrist pain so severe it can interfere with your day-to-day life.
Here are five practical ways you can prevent working in a home environment from hurting your back:
1. Keep moving
Humans aren’t designed to sit still for long periods of time, so the first rule for avoiding back, and other MSK, problems is to get up to stretch and move about every half hour. Although that might sound ambitious, we typically unlock our phones 28 times a day, so a good way to avoid sitting for hours on end is to get up and stretch whenever you find yourself reaching for your phone.
2. Use movement snacks
When working out your to-do list for the day, break up your tasks into sub-tasks and reward yourself with a ‘movement snack’ whenever you complete something. Even if it’s just a short walk around the block or a trip to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Instead of taking a big canister of water to your desk, make a point of regularly moving to get each of your eight glasses of water a day.
3. Make adjustments
Instead of forcing your body to fit where you’re working, this video from Nuffield Health explains how you can set up your workspace to fit around you. Even if you’re working from a laptop or having to work from different parts of the house during the day, small adjustments, to ensure your back and wrists are supported and your eyes are in line with your screen can make a big difference. Also, even if your posture is ‘perfect’, you still need to give those muscles a break from time-to-time by moving around. As physiotherapists like to say, “Your next posture is your best posture.”
4. Ask for help
If you’re struggling to sustain good posture while working from home, or have an underlying condition that is being aggravated, talk to your line manager or ask for a referral to your Occupational Health department. They should be able to carry out a remote review and provide you with some recommendations, and maybe even equipment, to help.
5. Listen to your body
We carry tension in our bodies, shortening our breath and tensing our shoulders when we feel stressed, telling ourselves we have to get something done and staying in front of the screen for so long that we become unproductive. To combat this, try to be mindful of when you’re feeling tense and go outside in the fresh air to stretch and release tension at least once a day.
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