If you sit at a desk for long hours of work, you can’t really get away of having pains and aches. The most common forms of strain are the ones in the neck, back, and wrists. The good news is there are lots of ways to get rid of it at work. Eliminating back and neck pain is surely possible with the tips below:
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Get an ergonomic evaluation.
With an appropriate ergonomic setup in the workplace, having muscle strain can be avoided even when you have to sit in front of your screen for long consecutive hours. Set up your keyboard in a way that your elbows will be bent at a 90-degree angle, so you can avoid wrist extension. If you place your keyboard too low or too high, it can make the ligaments around your wrist tightened and can eventually cause Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Also, if your monitor is placed below eye level, you could tend to lean forward with your neck. To avoid this, the monitor must be placed at a good level which allows the head and the neck to be in a neutral position. Achieving this setup could be a challenge for those who opt to use their laptops. However, if you are consistently experiencing back and neck pain and are tired of it, you should start thinking about shifting to a more ergonomically friendly ergonomic chair or some other arrangement.
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Get up and move.
Get up from your desk periodically, like every 45 minutes or one hour. This changes the stress focused on a specific muscle group and can then get rid of unwanted muscle strain. Getting up and moving your body like walking to and from the hallway can also get your blood flow better. A good blood flow relaxes the muscle instantly. Periodic detachment from your computer won’t only benefit your muscles but also your eyes.
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Stretch.
Like walking, doing simple stretches can also help ease the tension in the back, neck, and wrists. To alleviate your back pain, do some hamstring stretches like bending down to touch your toes. If the problem is your wrists, extend and flex them by holding the top of your hand and pushing it forward. Then, push your fingers into the palm to push your hand backwards. This will readily stretch the tendons and ligaments in your forearm.
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Change your chair.
Most of the time, the culprit of back and neck pain is an inappropriate chair. Get an ergonomic chair that can better enhance your posture. Experts recommend a kneeling chair which has a fixed seat with a 30-degree slope and a knee pad support. Kneeling chairs also enable the hip flexors to lengthen, putting less pressure on your lower back and disabling slouching.
The tips above are the most common quick fixes to say goodbye to muscle fatigue while at your desk. You may follow one or two of them, but if you follow all, that would be a surefire way to keep those muscle pains at bay.