Office Setup

I'm sure you've heard that sitting is the new smoking.  Well I wanted to share my office setup so you can see some of the tools I use to try and counter act the lack of movement throughout the average work day.

Fortunately for me I have a pretty progressive employer who understands the benefits of making employees happy.  Based on employee feedback we were given the choice of a sit/stand desk or a new chair (we had a choice of 4 different chairs that we could try out).  It was a no-brainer for me to go for the sit stand workstation.  A new chair doesn't address the fact that I would still be sitting all day.  The one you see in the picture is an Ergotron, I think they are around the $500 range.  When I first got the desk I was standing 30 mins at a time sometimes longer.  However I started to get calf cramps in the middle of the night.  At first I thought it was my workouts or a mineral deficiency of some kind but I couldn't figure it out.  However eventually I realized it might be the amount of time I was standing.  I eventually settled on standing 10 mins of every hour.  Now I tend to stand a little longer but with less frequency.

Office Setup

That fancy looking chair I have is a HAG Capisco Chair.

I bought it sight unseen.  I had been looking for an alternative chair for a while as a regular chair really bothers my lower back.  I heard Joe Rogan talk about the chair on his podcast.  It is $850.  I really balked at the price of this chair but once I figured how much I would be using it I treated it like a bed purchase and that it really would be worth while to make the investment in the chair.  My fairly constant lower back pain was also a good motivator to purchase the chair.  The particular model I got is designed to work with a sit stand desk and when you sit in it you don't really use the back of the chair as it naturally puts you in more neutral spine position.  I also like that you can adjust the height and sit a little higher up like a bar stool.  It works great with the sit stand desk in this way and enables me to adjust my seating position throughout the day.  It is still possible to slouch and have your pelvic tilt but it starts you in a much better position.

The mouse I use is an Evoluent vertical mouse.  A coworker turned me onto these.

I switched to this to take some pressure off my right wrist.

You can see in the picture where a lot of the pressure was on my wrist with a regular mouse.  This is from years of working on a computer.  It took a little while to get used to the mouse but overall I think my wrist thanks me for the change.

I use an anti fatigue mat to stand on when I'm standing.  I bought this Joe fatigue mat for $14 and have been very happy with it for the price.  The carpet is very minimal and the floor is quite unforgiving if you're standing on it.  I also take my shoes off when I'm at my desk.  I use the golf ball to massage the bottoms of my feet when I'm sitting.  When I'm standing I use the half moon foam pad to stretch my calves.  

I have these captain of crush grippers at my desk which I use periodically to improve my grip strength.  They are pretty much the gold standard in grippers and come in various strengths so you can just purchase the next one up once you get strong enough.  I have the sport (80 lbs) and the trainer (100 lbs).  I started on the sport and had a pretty weak grip.  I'm only 140 lbs so your mileage may vary.  You might want to start with the trainer or higher if you already have a strong grip or have bigger stronger hands.

That's a himalayan salt lamp.  My wife got me some of these for xmas and I put one in the office.  She got it here.  They are supposed to negatively ionize the air and have some benefits.  Worst case it gives off a nice soothing glow to bring out your inner hippie.

That's the ping pong table in our game room at work.  Yes we have a game room at work and I play ping pong almost daily.  Great way to break up the day and get some different movements in.  Read more about how I stay healthy during the day with my office work outs.