Well, it’s been longer than two weeks but this is the much anticipated :-) follow-up to my last post. The good news is my back does feel better but unfortunately no miracles. And, just in case you didn’t know, standing for 8+ hours isn’t very awesome at all. I’m glad these two weeks coincided with the holidays because it meant I didn’t work quite as much as I would have otherwise. My knees, ankles, and calves were crazy sore. Granted, standing is better for you than sitting, but I don’t recommend anyone enter into something like this lightly. It is hard and made me fairly cranky by the end of each day. Another interesting side effect of standing is I felt rushed and like I was always about to go somewhere for the first few days, but that may have just been me.
Well, after 2 weeks I decided standing wasn’t a great long term solution. So, I ordered a saddle chair!
Actually, I ordered two (you can kinda see the other one in the background) to test my options (thank you Amazon Prime with free returns). Anyway, my knees, calves, and ankles thank me for switching to a chair, but I am most definitely saddle sore. The logic behind a saddle chair is that when you sit with your legs in front of you, you automatically put your spine into flexion rather than extension which only exacerbates the pain from external herniations and bulges such as the one I have. With a saddle chair, your legs hang to each side, more vertically, which allows you to keep your spine in extension when sitting. It also promotes blood flow to the legs as opposed to cutting off that circulation when you sit in a traditional chair. You are also supposed to keep your feet behind the center piston of the chair to further aid in keeping everything in line. It came with a back rest but that would totally defeat the purpose so it’s still in the box.
Anyway, for the nest two weeks I have another experiment to endure! Cowboys aren’t saddle sore forever so I’m sure I’ll get used to it eventually and at least my chair doesn’t gallop and bounce around violently. And in all honesty the saddle pain isn’t anything compared to the back pain. In fact as I write this I’m in a waiting room for my wife’s doctor appointment and it hurts to stand up from these chairs. In the saddle, when I stand up at least I feel good and can walk around without waiting for my spine to re-align.
The only other issue of note is that I lowered my desk (from 16” supports to 8” supports) to accommodate the chair because it won’t extend high enough to match my standing desk height and that kinda sucks because now its too low when I stand, but if this works out long term, I’ll find a decent intermediate height for the desk.
We’ll see you again in two weeks!
