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Inflate the ball enough so that you feel perched on top of it rather than sinking into it.
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If you sit too long, your muscles will become fatigued and you may end up feeling sore in your middle back and lower back.
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While yoga ball chairs aren’t great for working at a desk all day, some groups of people can benefit from using them. Who benefits the most from a yoga ball chair? This position looks like a floppy banana sitting on a ball.”Ī small 2006 study found no difference in muscle activation between sitting on a yoga ball chair and sitting on a stool. “This is because many people roll their tailbones underneath and arch their shoulder forward, poking their chin forwards to compensate for the weight shift. “Sadly, I’ve seen almost worse posture on yoga ball chairs than on good desk chairs,” says Reid. In fact, a 2009 study found that after only an hour of sitting on a yoga ball at a desk, the participants showed significant “spinal shrinkage” (in other words, they slumped in their lower back). “You still have to think about how you’re sitting.” “A yoga ball chair doesn’t guarantee good posture,” says Caitlin Reid, holistic physiotherapist and wellness consultant at Aprivé Wellness. While sitting on a yoga ball may give you a core workout in short bursts, there isn’t a lot of evidence that it automatically improves posture. Probably not, at least not for more than an hour or two at a time. Should you swap your desk chair for a yoga ball?
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