What’s to Love About 4- to 6-Paddle Chairs?

If an eight-hour day at the office leaves you feeling stiff and sore, it might be that your office chair is beating you up on a daily basis. Cheap office chairs are the bane of the white-collar world. When you spend hours at a time parked at a desk, you need an adjustable office chair, something constructed with ergonomics — and humans — in mind. Ergonomic chairs are designed to provide maximum comfort and support to get you through your workday relatively unscathed.

Benefits of Ergonomic Chairs

Ergonomic office chairs give you a full range of adjustability for all contact points of your body when you’re in a seated position. They come in an assortment of designs — some featuring more adjustments than others.

The general rule of thumb? The more paddles, or levers, an office chair boasts, the more ergonomically adjustable it becomes.

Spending your days in a chair that’s highly adjustable helps prevent multiple problems:

Upper and Lower Back Pain
Neck Stiffness
Muscle Strain
Sore Legs
Poor Posture
The Many Uses of Paddles

Adjustable chairs that feature four to six paddles are the most ergonomically sound. Each paddle performs a different job to help customize the chair to best fit your body. Paddles control such functions as:

Seat Height
Seat Back Tilt
Seat Back Tension
Forward Seat Tilt
Back Height
Seat Depth

Additionally, the best office chairs come with fully adjustable arm rests. These chairs allow you to customize both the height and width of your arm rests, or even to remove the arms from the chair completely.

When you’re shopping for an ergonomically sound adjustable office chair, notice the presence and number of paddles present. Those levers put the adjustability in your new adjustable office chair.

You may not be able to take all the work out of your workday, but you can certainly make it less painful by investing in a quality, ergonomically sound office chair. Your Back, your neck, your legs, and probably even your spouse, will thank you for it later.