Reduce pain and prevent injury by improving your workspace

Pursuit Physiotherapy

Published

6 years ago

7 minute read

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How to optimize your workstation and posture to prevent pain and injury.

In the modern work world many of us spend our days sitting at a desk in front of the computer. The human body however was not designed for this sedentary lifestyle and will get stiff and sore from lack of movement. Even if you are active outside of work, sitting at a desk with poor setup and slouched posture can give you chronic aches and pains or exacerbate existing injuries.

Some common complaints that could be related to your posture include:

Neck pain and stiffness
Headaches
Numbness or tingling in the arms or hands
Shoulder pain
Upper back stiffness
Low back pain
Sciatica

Making some simple ergonomic adjustments to your workstation can help you feel more comfortable during and after your work day:

Ensure you have a good chair that is comfortable for you and adjusted properly. Ideally you should be sitting with your buttocks to the back of the chair so that you are leaning against the backrest. You may need to adjust the lumbar support or add a rolled up towel or small pillow behind the small of your back to support your spine’s natural curve.
Sit with both feet flat on the floor and the knees bent to about 90 degrees. Adjust your chair height accordingly or add a stool under your feet if you can’t touch the ground.
Adjust your computer monitor so that your screen is at eye level. This can be as easy as putting a book underneath to raise it up. You should not have to look down or strain to see your computer.
Have your keyboard at a comfortable height so that your elbows are bent to approximately 90 degrees and you are not reaching forward. If you have a laptop, consider using an external keyboard so that you type in a neutral position.
Adapt your workstation to fit you. Move things that you use frequently throughout the day (such as the phone, files, etc.) to a location that is easy to access so that you don’t have to reach or move awkwardly to get to them. This will help you avoid sprains and strains from poor movement patterns.

Even with the perfect ergonomic setup, poor posture can catch up to you. Some common habits to AVOID are:

Crossing your knees. Sitting in this position twists your pelvis and lumbar spine, putting extra strain on the muscles, joints, and ligaments. While it may feel good temporarily, you probably need to keep switching positions to stay comfortable because your body is not in a neutral position.
Perching on the front of your seat. While you may think it is good to try to hold yourself up straight without using the backrest it is not realistic to do this for an 8 hour day. Your postural muscles will fatigue quickly and you will end up slouching and feeling sore.
Leaning your shoulders forward and head down to look at your computer. Think of all the extra strain you are putting on your neck and shoulder to hold your body in this position! Try to remind yourself to sit up tall – Think shoulders down and back and head up. Your spine should feel long and supported, but not rigid.

It is also important to stay active throughout the day and break up long periods of sitting in one position. Here are some ideas to keep you limber throughout the day:

· Set an alarm to get up and move every 20-30 minutes. This could be as simple as standing up to do some stretches, taking a quick walk around the office, a washroom break, or going to get some water. Interrupted sitting is the best way to prevent tightness from building up in your spine and soft tissues

· Stretch at your desk. There are lots of simple movements and stretches you can do as you work to keep your body feeling good. Try to remember to move a little bit at least every 15-20 minutes. Try stretching your neck side to side, moving your head gently in different directions, rolling your shoulders backwards, squeezing your shoulder blades together, stretching your legs out in front of you, and moving your feet and ankles.

We hope these tips have been helpful and have given you ideas that you can incorporate into your daily life. Do not hesitate to call us and make an appointment. An in depth one-on-one assessment with one of our physiotherapists will help address your specific needs for injury prevention or management.

Written by Stephanie Connolly

Click to visit Pursuit Physiotherapy.

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Red Deer

Judge upholds sanctions against Red Deer Catholic school trustee who opposed LGBT agenda

Published on November 18, 2024

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Monique LaGrange was ousted last December from the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools’ board for comparing the LGBT agenda targeting children to brainwashing.

A Canadian judge ruled that a school board was justified to place harsh sanctions on a Catholic school trustee forced out of her position because she opposed extreme gender ideology and refused to undergo LGBT “sensitivity” training.

Justice Cheryl Arcand-Kootenay of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta ruled Thursday that the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) Board’s sanctions placed against former trustee Monique LaGrange will stand.

LaGrange had vowed to fight the school board in court, and it remains to be seen if she can take any further actions after the decision by Judge Arcand-Kootenay.

The judge ruled that the RDCRS’s policies in place for all trustees, which the board contended were breached, were “logical, thorough, and grounded in the facts that were before the Board at the time of their deliberations.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, the RDCRS board voted 3-1 last December to disqualify LaGrange after she compared the LGBT agenda targeting kids with that of “brainwashing” Nazi propaganda. As a result of being voted out, LaGrange later resigned from her position.

The former school board trustee initially came under fire in September 2023 when she posted an image showing kids in Nazi Germany waving swastika flags during a parade to social media, with the bottom of the post showing an image of kids waving LGBT “Pride” flags along with the text: “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”

After her post went viral, calls for her to step down grew from leftist Alberta politicians and others. This culminated in her removal as director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association (ACSTA).

In September 2023, the RDCRS passed a motion to mandate that LaGrange undergo “LGBTQ+” and holocaust “sensitivity” training for her social media post.

LaGrange, however, refused to apologize for the meme or undergo “sensitivity” training.

Education

‘Grade inflation’ gives students false sense of their academic abilities

Published on November 18, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Michael Zwaagstra

The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.

Suppose you’re scheduled for major heart surgery. Shortly before your surgery begins, you check into your surgeon’s background and are pleased to discover your surgeon had a 100 per cent average throughout medical school. But then you learn that every student at the same medical school received 100 per cent in their courses, too. Now you probably don’t feel quite as confident in your surgeon.

This is the ugly reality of “grade inflation” where the achievements of everyone, including the most outstanding students, are thrown into question. Fortunately, grade inflation is (currently) rare in medical schools. But in high schools, it’s a growing problem.

In fact, grade inflation is so prevalent in Ontario high schools that the University of Waterloo’s undergraduate engineering program uses an adjustment factor when evaluating student applications—for example, Waterloo might consider a 95 per cent average from one school the equivalent of an 85 per cent average from another school.

Grade inflation is a problem in other provinces as well. The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.

Sadly, grade inflation is so rampant these days that some school administrators don’t even try to hide it. For example, earlier this year all students at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, received perfect marks on their midterm exams in two biology courses and one business course—not because these students had mastered these subjects but because the York Catholic District School Board had been unable to find a permanent teacher at this school.

The fact that a school board would use grade inflation to compensate for inadequate instruction in high school tells us everything we need to know about the abysmal academic standards in many schools across Canada.

And make no mistake, student academic performance is declining. According to results from the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), math scores across Canada declined from 532 points in 2003 to 497 points in 2022 (PISA equates 20 points to one grade level). In other words, Canadian students are nearly two years behind on their math skills then they were 20 years ago. While their high school marks are going up, their actual performance is going down.

And that’s the rub—far from correcting a problem, grade inflation makes the problem much worse. Students with inflated grades get a false sense of their academic abilities—then experience a rude shock when they discover they aren’t prepared for post-secondary education. (According to research by economists Ross Finnie and Felice Martinello, students with the highest high school averages usually experience the largest drop in grades in university). Consequently, many end up dropping out.

Grade inflation even hurts students who go on to be academically successful because they suffer the indignity of having their legitimate achievements thrown into doubt by the inflated grades of other students. If we want marks to have meaning, we must end the practise of grade inflation. We do our students no favours when we give them marks they don’t really deserve.

Just as our confidence in a surgeon would go down if we found out that every student from the same medical school had a 100 per cent average, so we should also question the value of diplomas from high schools where grade inflation is rampant.