CoreChair is unique among ergonomic office chairs.
Traditional chairs encourage an open hip angle with a slightly reclined back to support the spine.
This position is accommodated by a variety of different adjustments to allow a personal fit but often these adjustments are not intuitive and when orienting to the work surface the user often finds themselves too far back and reaching to their work surface.
This sustained position necessitates the use of arm rests to avoid discomfort in the upper back and neck that arises from holding our arms out in front of our body.
The combination of reclined position, arms supported and minimal movement options, contribute to the sedentary consequences that have been labelled as “sitting disease” or “sitting is the new smoking”.
Typically, when using this style of sitting solution and when we are engaged in some intense desk tasks, we find ourselves sitting on the front edge of our seat. This is intuitively an ideal engaged sitting position, where our knees are lower than our hips and our pelvis is more vertical and our ascending spine is more extended and balanced, with ears over the shoulder.
Unfortunately, this position cannot be sustained without constantly engaging your core stabilizing muscles. Eventually these supportive soft tissues fatigue, and the user literally collapses. The long term effects of bad posture include poor digestion, vertical subluxation, and strain to bones, ligaments, and joints.
The CoreChair Design
The CoreChair design accommodates this intuitive engaged sitting position by comfortably embracing the user’s pelvis from the underside in front of the sit bones and from the top at the back of the pelvis.
The sculpted seat cradles the sit bones and tailbone, providing ideal comfort and preventing the sit bones from sliding forward. The pelvic stabilizer compliments that support by supporting the top of the back of the pelvis.
This combination encourages a more stable vertical pelvis which in turn encourages a more vertical and balanced ascending spine.
Combine this support with a more open hip angle, where your knees are lower than your hips, your biomechanics are more naturally balanced.
When comfortably seated in this position, with minimal upper back support and no arm rests, our body can move more freely in all directions.
The movement mechanism allows this well supported pelvis to move freely about an axis immediately beneath your centre of balance. This movement encourages enhanced joint mobility in your hips and spine as they articulate about the pelvis.
The upper back is encouraged to move through all of its natural movements of flexion, extension and rotation.
Movement is Medicine.
Proper set up and fit of the CoreChair will enhance this experience
Having achieved this ideal engaged sitting position with proper support, you should orient yourself closer to your work surface using a rough guide to have a fist size distance from your belly to the work surface.
You will notice that you are now sitting higher than your previous chair so you should pay attention to your monitor height and distance.
A key indicator is that you are able to sit comfortably with the heels of your hands resting on your work surface, arms hanging naturally at your side and elbows bent to approximately 90 degrees or greater.
Often the challenge is matching the correct sitting adjustments to your height relative to your workstation height.
For example, someone who is approximately 5’2” or 157cm and using a standard height work surface that is typically around 30” or 76cm high, may find that their elbows are bent to less than 90 degrees to allow their hands to sit on the work surface.
This generally results in the user elevating their shoulders which causes a sustained activation of the muscles of the upper back and shoulders and more discomfort.
Ideally a sit to stand desk that will have a height range that will accommodate this lower height as well as the height required for standing, would be the best compliment.
If this adjustable desk is not an option, you might consider ordering a taller model of the CoreChair and using a foot support to essentially re-orient your position relative to the work surface.
