Work-from-home ergonomics

CloudStroller

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So I'm posting this under the "health" section, I figure it is as good a place as any.

I'm trying to kit myself out so that I can work without being in pain - got a nice office chair, a desk with a reasonable height, laptop is standing on a pile of dictionaries to bring it up to eye-level and using an external keyboard / mouse.

But the problem that I'm now battling with I think is called "ulnar deviation" - and it seems to hurt my right hand more than my left (though I guess others might have different experiences).

Does anyone know of a good ergonomic keyboard/mouse setup? I know Microsoft is semi-famous for their ergonomic peripherals, and I found this on ye olde Takealot:

There's also this monstrosity:
which is reviewed here:
At around the 3:00 mark, you see illustrated quite clearly how this design corrects for my very problem, which is nice, but ... yeah, R8k for that beast is a bit too much.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? How did you solve it?
 

Johnatan56

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How widely spaced are the arm rests of your chair? Are the arm rests in-line with the table?
 

CloudStroller

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How widely spaced are the arm rests of your chair? Are the arm rests in-line with the table?
The arm rests can go up and down, I currently have them the same height as the table.

They are spaced reasonably widely (it was a gaming chair which I picked up cheaply, the arm rests are somewhat widely spaced but other than that it's very comfortable). I find myself most of the time using the left arm rest, and my right arm is resting on top of my right leg, rather than using the arm-rest.
 

biometrics

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I don't get pains in my hands but for years suffered from a stiff and sore neck and lower back. Even though I work on a laptop I use an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. The monitor's middle view point is just below my eye level, so nearly centered. Bent elbows are armrest and table height. I use a good quality office chair.

But my biggest discovery is that I can not be angled to my desk at all. Even 10 degrees for ten minutes and I have a stiff neck that requires a myprodol/genpayne. The thing is for years we worked at desks with a slight curve on the one side, the side we worked on. So even thinking that I am square to the desk, I wasn't 100%. So I was in agony for years. When we moved office I was out of the office for a few months and noticed I never have neck pain. On returning to the office within 10 minutes at that desk and I could feel my neck stiffening again. The penny dropped... turned the desk around so the I sat at the flat side, and problem gone.
 

Johnatan56

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The arm rests can go up and down, I currently have them the same height as the table.

They are spaced reasonably widely (it was a gaming chair which I picked up cheaply, the arm rests are somewhat widely spaced but other than that it's very comfortable). I find myself most of the time using the left arm rest, and my right arm is resting on top of my right leg, rather than using the arm-rest.
Define reasonable, and how is your keyboard/mouse laid out in relation. Feel free to make a picture from above basically.
 

CloudStroller

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This site has helped fix lots of my alignment issues: https://posturedirect.com/blog-2/sitting-posture/
Good point about posture. It's not so much my posture that's the problem but the angles my arms make.

But my biggest discovery is that I can not be angled to my desk at all.
This is actually a pretty good point. I sit at a straight desk, but I do find that curved ones throw me out.

Define reasonable, and how is your keyboard/mouse laid out in relation. Feel free to make a picture from above basically.
So there's 60cm in-between my two arm-rests. It feels wide to me but I haven't been to the office with a tape measure since I got this one, so I can't compare it numerically with what I'm used to. Like I said it's a gaming chair so I'd imagine gamers spread their arms quite wide? If I try and imagine I was playing a shooter or something, with left hand on the keyboard and right hand on the mouse, then it feels pretty good. But if I'm typing, then my right arm is almost always in an uncomfortable position / angle, or just not on the arm-rest at all.

The arms do swivel a bit, so if I swivel them so they point to my body, then I can rest my elbows on the closest bits to me, and the separation is now down to 49cm. If I look down now, and draw a line from my navel to the HP logo on my screen, then it more or less lines up with the gap between the G and H keys on the keyboard. So that seems more or less okay centered?

Then If I just rest my hands on the keyboard it feels pretty comfortable in this arrangement. But it's a regular basic Logitech keyboard, so my wrists need to bend to line my fingers up with the home row. I think this is what's causing pain in my wrist and making me bring my right arm in to try and counter this. (I'd try to take a picture, but I don't really have any way to mount a phone directly above me. And I'm ashamed of my lockdown paunch.)

I spend most of my day with my hands on the keyboard (programming or other kinds of documentation). I have a feeling that something like a microsoft ergonomic keyboard with its separation of the two halves and tilt outwards, would basically solve this problem.

Admittedly, my touch-typing isn't the most disciplined, My pinky fingers do very little, and my index fingers reach across to the other hand's territory often :rolleyes: so an ergonomic keyboard would probably be a bit of an adjustment, but if it can solve the pain I'm getting in my right wrist then I think it'll be worth it.
 
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dabean

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A simple test to rule out posture as the problem would be to stand up straight with your arms at your side.

If your thumbs point towards each other your chest is too tight and your upper-back is too weak. Doing this a few times a day and these a few times a week should sort it out in a few months.

If your thumbs point forward feel free to ignore my advice.
 

jasong

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A simple test to rule out posture as the problem would be to stand up straight with your arms at your side.

If your thumbs point towards each other your chest is too tight and your upper-back is too weak. Doing this a few times a day and these a few times a week should sort it out in a few months.

If your thumbs point forward feel free to ignore my advice.

I find generally pain from work comes because I'm not exercising enough. Especially since the lockdown happened I didn't have a good way to exercise and I began to get back pain, but my job offers some at-home kickboxing sessions and attending those has helped the problem a lot. But also, you need a good chair and your equipment has to be set up right.
 
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