About the standing table, spinal health and personal effectiveness

Recently, I again switched to 100% work from home and began to use the table for standing work. I want to share a dump of my experience on the topic of health, to urge to finish prokrastirovat and start working standing up.

First, why standing up to work is not a panacea ...

I am 39 years old, I am a programmer, my back problems started at 24. The diagnosis is protrusion of the intervertebral disk L4-L5 about 6-8 mm, there are also protrusions in other departments. Over these 15 years, I apparently became an expert in everything regarding efficiency for people with spinal problems: I tried a lot of money and developed habits that allow you to work 12-14 hours a day and stay away from osteopaths, surgeons and others. make incompatible changes in the design of my body.

In particular, I realized that standing up is not salvation. Standing vertebral muscles tense almost like sitting, just the spine experiences a slightly different load vector. Therefore, the key to long productive work is a regular change of body position. The table at which I stopped allows you to change positions without much distraction from work — after a week or two of work at the table, a change of position occurs almost without exiting the stream.

But first, about what else is in my life to maintain the spine in working condition, since I tried many things until I found the right balance. In addition to working while standing, I regularly perform a cocktail (or broth?) From the recommendations and techniques of various doctors and movements, which at one time gave me the greatest effect:

• Bike 2-3 times a week for 1 - 1.5 hours;
• 3-4 times a week - exercises on the long back muscles and abs, with a focus on the number of repetitions, and not on weight;
• massage in a massage chair (the market is flooded with Chinese, and not “American”, as stated, chairs, - look for the Japanese) 2-3 times a week;
• Once a week, running 3-5 kilometers. I started running almost six months ago, because I felt I could. Prior to this, he began to terribly “click” the spine from running and the sensations of 10 years ago were returned.

I do not regularly use any drugs - chondroprotectors, homeopathy, etc. Some homeopathic remedies changed my sense of self, but not the clinical picture. I also tried a lot and did not help at all - a vegetarian diet (5 years), yoga (3 years, can lead to hip joint arthrosis), swimming (some of the doctors told me that it can lead to spasm of the long muscles of the spine, and it was probably like that with me), lying work, weight-lifting, walking for 1.5-2 hours a day, TRX, various chairs (Herman Miller Embody and a bunch of others did not survive, but Aeron is OK).

In general, if you think that by buying a table for standing, you will no longer have back problems and increase your productivity - forget it. We'll have to rebuild a bunch of habits before we can get back to life-to-problem-with-the-spine.

Well, now about the table itself and why it is needed at all.

Before “ripening” to the table, I tried a lot of gadgets to work while standing, but all of them have a fundamental flaw - they take up space on the work surface. In addition, they are more difficult to regulate, if regulated at all, less stable, provide less space for standing (for example, it’s not so easy to change position if the screen starts to glare due to bright sunlight). But the main thing - in principle, it is wrong to compare gadgets for work while standing and a table: you need to compare a table for work while standing and any other desktop !

When I started having problems with my spine, I also began to try to change my sitting position - to test different tables, chairs, and so on. And very often it turned out that the table and chair together did not give the opportunity to choose the ideal position - the armrests at the chair “rest” on the tabletop even in the ideal position, the tabletop is slightly higher than necessary, and the wrists start to hurt, and etc. So, the important feature of any table for standing work is that it will allow you to ideally choose a sitting position, or, for example, in a saddle chair. Moreover, when working behind a laptop, it will most likely be slightly higher than usual (so as not to look at the screen from top to bottom), and with a stand-alone screen - correspond to how the chair is adjusted. 99.9% of offices where ordinary tables stand are perceived by me as terrible archaism - after all, tables in offices usually cost a lot of money, often more expensive than chairs!

When choosing, you should also pay attention to the stability and massiveness of the base, and geeks who work from home should not forget that the table should be in harmony with the interior.

Tables with manual adjustment, in my opinion, should be swept away immediately: during operation it is important to change the position without leaving the flow, manual adjustment does not work for this, but the speed of the motor, on the contrary, matters.

My personal table was made by one of the pioneers of work standing in Russia, and when I matured before the purchase I was already “captured” by their brand.

The size of the table top is 70x110 - the same as the table from the Soviet Union, at which I did my homework. Manufacturers still offer a semicircular neckline, which, in theory, is more ergonomic, but I have no place for it with such a small width of the tabletop. The table top has a thickness of 4 cm and rounded edges, so you can safely lean on the table while standing, it does not cause discomfort.

A few words about the design of the table and the details that I paid attention to when choosing. In Russia, only a worktop is usually made, and it can be of any shape and size. The servo with a servo drive from many manufacturers comes from China in finished form, and when assembling it is simply adjustable in width. I settled on a model in which the steps of the footplate are quite solid - 2mm steel in powder coating, everything is assembled onto 10mm bolts, all of the counter nuts are welded into the base material. No pucks, Grover and the like Labuda, which is easy to lose when you move, no. Upon delivery, the table was assembled in 10 minutes including electric wiring, which, I think, is an important factor for people who rent housing and plan to transport the table with them. The base itself weighs 30 pounds, and this gives sufficient stability, even when the table is raised to the maximum height.

In my desk, in addition to the servo control key, there are four memory buttons for fixing “favorite” positions and a phone application that changes the position of the table on a schedule. I can imagine what this can become if such tables are used in offices - control over the position of employees in the workplace can be done from the office hr. About why it is important to have exactly four buttons, and not two, I wrote above - there is more than one comfortable position both when working sitting and standing.

For the table you can buy a bunch of gadgets, but most of them are not useful to me. I work mostly at a laptop and prefer to keep the table empty, so the monitors, stationery and other things are not about me.

I want to finish the post with what I started this: the path to health consists of many small steps, and each has its own. Perhaps for someone suitable yoga or gym. In the tables for work standing up, sorting out a little easier, which I tried to do.