Every 6 out of 10 individuals who spend 9-10 hours a day on a desk suffer from back pain.
According to a study performed back in 2017, back pain is causing permanent disability.
If you have a desk job, you have to be very cautious about your posture as wrong postures can lead to severe back pain.
In this guide, we will talk about the perfect typing postures that you must maintain to keep your wrists and upper back away from fatigue and pain.
Besides that, a perfect typing posture can also help you increase your overall productivity, accuracy, and typing speed.
Before proceeding with the perfect posture tips, let’s quickly understand:
What does proper typing posture mean?
During extensive keyboard work, if you end up feeling fatigued or stressed, you are not maintaining the typing posture correctly.
If you will maintain a proper posture, the chances of getting stressed or fatigued will be reduced significantly.
In proper typing posture, every body part will be working without any additional strain with appropriate blood circulation, therefore you will mostly feel relaxed.
Now, let’s go through the ideal equipment positions that you must keep to achieve the perfect typing position:
Equipment Positions for Ideal Typing Posture
Usually, people believe posture is only limited to the body and the equipment doesn’t play any major role in it. However, the real scenario is completely different. Your equipment alignment is as important as body posture.
In this section, we are going to learn about Equipment Positions:
Keyboard Position
Your keyboard must be positioned below your elbow levels, it should be either flat or raised a bit from the top. It should create a downward slope on your desk.
Since the keyboard is the most used equipment while typing, you should regularly clean the keys and ensures that you are not required to exert extra force to press the keys. If you are struggling with keypresses, it is recommended to look for a replacement or get your keyboard repaired by an expert.
It is not suggested to force yourself to use a bad keyboard as it is directly going to affect productivity and stress.
Mouse Position
While using a mouse, you have to ensure that it is placed near the keyboard so that you don’t have to stretch your elbows more than usual to use the mouse. Apart from this, your mouse must fit in your palm. A too big or too small mouse can trigger pain in fingers and wrist muscles.
Monitor Position
First and Foremost, your monitor should be placed at least at an arm’s distance from you. It would be ideal if your monitor has an anti-glare feature. You can also download some free applications to make your monitor more eye-friendly.
The placement of the monitor should be in a way that while looking at it, you are not straining any of your body muscles (especially the neck).
The monitor should be placed at your eye level. You can use height-adjusting arms to raise your monitor. If you are tight on budget, you can use paper rims or books instead of a monitor arm, it works almost similar.
It is not suggested to pick the cheapest monitor without checking its features. The quality of your monitor will be directly affecting your eyes and we have come across cases where people are suffering from endless vision problems due to bad monitors.
Body Alignment for Perfect Typing Posture
Neck Position
As mentioned above, you must ensure that your neck muscles aren’t strained when you look at your monitor. A slight strain in the neck can make your head feel at least 2-3 times heavy than its actual weight.
Your neck is among the most sensitive part of your body and if its comfort is compromised, sooner or later, you will be suffering from various neck and upper back-related problems.
Your neck and chest must be in a straight line to avoid maximum strain when you are working on your desk. Besides that, your shoulders must be in a straight line with your ears.
Elbow Position
While working on a desk, and typing, your elbow is going to be the most active working body. Through your typing, work session, you need to maintain 90-100 degrees of angle on your elbows.
Even a 10-15 degrees of angle change can adversely affect your productivity many folds.
Legs Position
Most people neglect their leg position while typing. Even in our team, only a few of the members ensure that their legs are placed ergonomically while working, during our research we found those users more relaxed throughout the day.
You must keep a 90 degrees knee angle while sitting on your desk and ensure that your feet are placed flat on the floor.
Wrist Position
Here comes the most vital part of your body. You can’t think of working on a keyboard if your wrist is compromised. Our wrist is extremely flexible but we try to keep our wrist in a stretched position, it will start struggling and we might feel the pain in its joints.
If you are applying additional efforts on your hand and wrist to maintain their position, you are sitting in a bad posture. You have to rectify it.
While working on your desk, you must ensure that your wrist is having a minimum angle from your arm. Your hand should be placed comfortably on the desk.
Conclusion
When your equipments are positioned correctly and your body is aligned as per the ergonomic norms mentioned above, you will achieve the perfect typing posture.
You have to sync all the above-mentioned points to have a relaxing experience during prolonged working on a desk. However, we would recommend taking regular short breaks in-between to active your body muscles and maintain proper blood circulation.
Lately, if you are suffering from severe body pain, it is recommended to consult a physician.
Perfect posture and an active lifestyle can help you avoid most of the body pain but if you are being suffered from body pain, you must reach out to a medical practitioner immediately.