29 Sep Posture survival pack – lamination optional

Ok, so for those of us who don’t live and breathe posture (i.e. Polly and Nicole who are giving advice about it all day), remembering to do all the things that can help us when sitting for long periods of time can be a bit tough. Especially when we’re perhaps sat at our desk and we get caught up in our work. Before you know it two hours has gone and whilst you had every good intention on getting up every 30- 40 minutes for a stretch you totally forgot to!

I now work for shorter periods based at a desk because the majority of my time is spent running around with (or after!) my toddler. On the days when I do work a solid 8 hours I am totally shocked at how my body aches and in particular the pain I get in my lower back and shoulders if I haven’t moved away from the desk enough. Despite knowing how important posture and desk breaks are my time to do work is so limited I am always totally focused and often forget. My way around my forgetfulness therefore has been to create a little ‘posture routine’. It takes a few minutes to get set up but really does work to remind me to move!

Set up reminders either on your outlook calendar (I like that because then the little reminder pings up on your screen) for every 40 minutes or on your phone if you prefer. Make the reminders something very simple ‘stand up and stretch’ or perhaps if you feel you might need a bit more of prompt you could go for something like ‘Get up! NOW!!’. Whatever works for you. If you need the reminder to literally boot your bum out the chair then go for it.

I make sure I always have a big glass or bottle of water at my desk because obviously staying hydrated is really important and again something that we can easily forget as we get engrossed. Also the more you drink, the more you’ll need to get to the toilet which is a great chance to move a bit away for the desk!

Finally I have a print out (and you may want to print few copies if you have to hot-desk as a single picture can easily get lost) of the best posture to sit in when working at a computer or laptop. I blue tac it somewhere in my eye line as a constant reminder to sit up. I stick it in different places though so that I don’t get so used to it I stop ‘seeing it’ – i.e. I ignore it.

So there we have it. Spend a few minutes setting a frequent ‘bossy’ reminder to get up, have a drink to hand and carry a picture of the perfect posture with you wherever you go. Your colleagues may mock you for carrying around your posture picture (especially if you go so far as to laminate it!) but if it helps your back it really is worth it.

Source of ‘print out posture reminder’: http://ergonomicsfix.com/pain-free-correct-posture/