Obese Man Uses a Yoga Ball as a Desk Chair for 30 Days (and I Got a TON of Back Pain)
3Obese Man Uses a Yoga Ball as a Desk Chair for 30 Days (and I Got a TON of Back Pain)
References:
Used in Video
https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-of-research-expertise-for-the-prevention-of-musculoskeletal-disorders/resources/position-papers/use-stability-balls-workplace-place-standard-office-chair
Not Used in Video
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/stability-ball-balance-core-calories/2020/09/29/0b485c74-feb4-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4569865/
Script:
I’m about to look like Dwight from the US version of The Office on his Fitness Orb:
[Play a clip from the Office]
Ignoring the funny scene for a second, using an exercise ball as an office chair was a big thing back in the 2000s to early 2010s. It appeared on TV from the Office and was shown through various Youtube videos. It looks like that trend was overtaken by the treadmill desk in the mid to late 2010s. Now in the 2020s, it’s just working from home to avoid getting sick. Oh, these silly little trends. That brings me to this video and the main question I have. Does using a yoga ball as an office chair actually have any benefits at all. Does using a Yoga ball as an office chair help strengthen your core or help your back? Let’s find out when I use a yoga ball for thirty days instead of a chair.
[Intro]
First, I want to give some background on why I picked this challenge. As my frequent viewers will note, I have two constant complaints about my body throughout my videos: my lack of ab strength and how bad my back hurts. My career is as a Software Developer, and I also do this YouTube thing in my free time. That means I am in an office chair for around ten to twelve hours daily. As you can see from the video behind me, my posture on a computer chair is not great. I recorded myself for only fifteen minutes, so this isn’t even close to my worst posture throughout the day.
To fix these problems, I needed to get rid of the chair and figure something else out. That’s when I remembered this trend and the clip from the Office. I remember reading back then that swapping a desk chair for a yoga ball can help engage your core and strengthen your back. In fact, on most yoga ball listing pages, you see pictures of people using them as desk chairs. A company would never lie to old Jack, so it must be true. To prove it, I’ll buy that item and use the yoga ball as a chair to fix my back and engage my core muscles.
To begin, I headed to amazon and bought this Yoga ball for about twenty-five dollars. I got both the thirty and thirty-four-inch sizes as I wasn’t sure what would work for my height and desk size. I’m six foot one or two and around three hundred pounds depending on the day. After trying both, the thirty-four-inch yoga ball was perfect for someone of my size. At first, it was a little high, but my weight at three hundred pounds pushing on the ball lowered it enough. I had no problems with the product or pumping it up, so I recommend it. Just adjust your height and weight to determine the size of the yoga ball.
With that item purchased, I went ahead and created my outline. My plan was to ease into using the yoga ball throughout my day. Starting off with one hour for the first week before ending my last day at five hours. I did this for thirty days, excluding the seventh, thirteen, nineteen, and twenty-fifth. With this outline, my goal is to help eliminate my back pain. With the plan outline, the product purchased, and my back crying for relief, I started out on my Yoga Ball desk journey. Here is my reaction on day 1 after an hour of use.
[Day 1]
That’s right, after day one, my back problems actually increased. Throughout the rest of the thirty days, it actually got worse and worse, with the back pain becoming excruciating towards the end. I did this challenge in August and am recording this in November with normal back pain. With that said, it was definitely the yoga ball hurting my back. Once I switched back to a regular chair, my back was fine, or at least fine. My big thing was the lack of any back support made me lean forward even more than usual after an hour. That and the uneven support area may have caused compression in my lower back.
Read the rest at jack-jenkins.com