I have slouched at a desk for about a decade and started deliberately sitting upright a few weeks ago. Twenty minutes in it feels like actual work and I sag back without noticing. Does this stop being effortful, roughly how long does that take, or am I chasing the wrong goal entirely?
The goal is slightly wrong, which is why it feels endless. Nobody holds an upright posture through willpower for eight hours — the people who look comfortable are being held there by the chair and the desk geometry, not by effort. The endurance does improve, maybe six to eight weeks before an hour is unremarkable, but you get far more from making upright the path of least resistance. Lumbar support that actually touches your back, seat depth with about two fingers of gap between the seat edge and the back of your knee, and the screen where your head naturally wants to be.
The two finger seat depth check is new to me and my seat is clearly far too deep.
Too deep is the most common chair fault and the cheapest to fix with a cushion behind your back. A deep seat forces you to slide forward and lose the backrest completely, which is exactly where slouching starts.
Six weeks matches my experience for the fatigue easing off. What surprised me was that some general strength work did more for my sitting than any sitting technique did — though that is only what worked for me, and if there is pain rather than fatigue involved it is worth a physio session to find out what is actually going on.
It also helps to stop aiming for a rigid military posture. Ribcage stacked over pelvis, shoulders relaxed rather than yanked back — the yanked back version is what makes it exhausting after 20 minutes.
@negative_split_nan · last yr. · 2 replies
Also stop thinking of it as one correct position. The healthiest change I made was not sitting better, it was sitting in three or four different ways across a day and moving between them. Static perfect posture for six hours is still static.
Reply
Report
@baseweight_bel · last yr.
The three or four ways framing is the one that stuck for me. Perfect posture as a target lasted about a week before I gave up on it.
Reply
Report