Prevent back pain when working from home: Here’s how

It’s not until you add up things like your journey to work, the short walk you take at lunchtime, or your route to a meeting that you realize how little we move when working from home. One part of our body that often suffers from a lack of movement is our back. Back pain is part and parcel for those who spend long periods of time sitting down every day and don’t have an ergonomic home working set-up. In order to prevent this, we’ve put together a few simple exercises that you can do at home without difficulty when you take breaks from working. Why not also find out more about the correct way to sit at your workstation and what else you can do to stay active and be kind to your back?

Simple tips to prevent back pain:

How to master your everyday routine working from home

Anyone who has the option of working from home should examine whether their workspace is ergonomic and bear several things in mind. After all, long periods of sitting down under poor conditions or hunching over a laptop don’t just cause problems in the shoulder and neck area: the lower back is often also affected by pain. If you don’t manage to improve your seated posture and offset your inactivity in the long term, you’re at risk of developing serious health problems such as an intervertebral disk prolapse or osteoarthritis. We might even struggle to keep our productivity at the level asked of us if our well-being is damaged by back pain when sitting.

Sitting correctly

Your workspace: Optimize your set-up

If you’re just working at home using a laptop, you should ensure that the screen is elevated. You are, however, advised to get your hands on additional hardware instead and set this up directly in front of you on the desk. Having a monitor that is big enough not only protects your eyes, but also your posture.

Your improved field of vision to the screen will help you to prevent possible curvature of the spine. Ideally, the upper edge of the screen should be set at around two fingers' breadth above your eyes. This is how you can achieve a desirable, slightly downward-facing line of sight. The distance between the screen and your eyes should measure at least 50 cm.

Also make sure to direct your line of sight so that the windows in the room in which you’re working don’t cause glare.

An external keyboard and ergonomic mouse are just as crucial when it comes to providing relief to your neck, shoulders, arms, and wrists. Position the keyboard and mouse around 10 to 15 cm away from the edge of the desk to give your hands a place to rest in between use. Some people also find it comfortable to use a mouse mat with a wrist rest.

Your chair should allow your thighs and back to form an angle of more than 90 degrees. If you’re seated correctly, your thigh should drop slightly towards your knee. If your chair is not set at the correct height for you to do this, you can also remedy this with simple aids, such as chair leg caps or a booster cushion. The soles of both feet should ideally make full contact with the floor to absorb some of your body weight. Your arms should also rest on the desk or arm rest at a right angle to ensure that your shoulders are relaxed. Your back should make contact with the backrest to support the lumbar region of your spine. By now tilting the pelvis slightly forward, you will assume an upright, healthy seated posture.

Another useful tip is to keep your legs uncrossed to aid the flow of blood through your veins. But that’s not all.

Changing position

Dynamic sitting instead of rigid posture

If you can’t avoid long periods of sitting down, you could make use of your chair’s tilt function – if it has one – or change your seating position at regular intervals: Sit upright on the front edge of the chair, spend a few minutes cross-legged or sit back and relax with your legs stretched out – this allows you to at least loosen your joints and muscles a little. There are also a variety of fun foot exercises that you can try out at your desk at any time to go some way to satisfying your urge to move.

It is, however, even more important to stand up as often as you can to avoid back pain and tension when sitting in the first place. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to be able to work standing up sometimes – if that’s you, take advantage of the opportunity! Alternatives to the height-adjustable desk are the kitchen counter, a high chest of drawers or even the high, bar-style table from the garden or recreation room.

Changing your workstation often or taking a stroll around the living room when you’re on a call are just two ways that you can make sure you’re moving more throughout your working day at home.

In general:

be creative and try to come up with routines to ensure you don’t cease up, because
every little helps! Paying a daily visit to the mailbox or taking out the garbage more often gives
you a few extra meters in your daily count.

Training

Take advantage of breaks for workouts and targeted back training

Eine blonde junge Frau sitzt auf dem Boden auf einer Gymnastikmatte. Sie hat ihre Hände auf ihre Beine abgelegt und lächelt in die Kamera.

Eine blonde junge Frau sitzt auf dem Boden und führt eine Yogaübung aus.

Eine blonde junge Frau in einem roten Top sitzt im Schneidersitz auf dem Boden und meditiert.

Regular exercises for your back should be firmly on the agenda for your breaks from working and sitting. The best thing to do is to put together a training plan which involves performing several back exercises spaced out throughout the day. With targeted back training, you will strengthen your abdominals and back muscles in particular. This can help you not only to counteract potential health problems, you can also benefit from more movement in your home office.

To give you some inspiration, we’ve put together a few movement sequences that you can use to
train and prevent back pain in an effective way – none of them require any equipment and they’re all
really fun to do:

exercises for a strong back!