A few weeks ago, we posted an article about alternatives to your standard desk chair and how that very chair may be harmful to your health.  The article explained how the standard desk chair can be bad for your back, can promote poor circulation and flexibility, and can encourage one to not move around much during their work day. That article can be found here.

After discussing the article amongst our team, we began to consider some of the options it offered.  While some of the options presented were outlandish, like the treadmill desk, others like replacing your desk chair with an exercise ball were not.   In fact, after looking into it a bit, we found that most exercise balls do not run over $20, while a nice ergonomic desk chair can run nearly $300.

From left to right: Susan, Jake (me), Chad, Tony, Ryan, Intern Ryan

So in this spirit we all ended up purchasing exercise balls to replace our desk chairs(the picture at the left is the Interactive team and their new seats). After a week I have to say it’s really going quite well!  While Intern Ryan got laughed at when he first picked his up, I followed suit within a few days, and by the following week the rest of Interactive had ordered theirs off of Amazon (I guess Intern Ryan got the last laugh!).

Anyways, we’ve all been keeping more active through using them(its easy to do 10 crunches randomly while sitting at your desk), and I for one have had to get up and walk around less because I’m constantly moving while sitting on it.  Below is an article running through 10 reasons to use an exercise ball instead of a desk chair at work. It really presents some good arguments!

10 reasons to use an exercise ball as a chair