Workstation Health and Fitness Solutions for RSI
5. Stretching Exercises
Regular stretching is an essential part of RSI prevention and recovery, remember that your body is not designed to be sat at a desk for 8 hours a day clicking a mouse. Respect your body and give it the movement and range of motion it normally expects.
6. Posture
Good posture is essential to avoid repetitive strain injury and other computer related injuries. Well designed workstation ergonomics can help in maintaining a good posture.
* Make sure that you can reach the keyboard with your wrists as flat as possible (not twisted up or down) and straight (not twisted left or right). An ergonomic keyboard can help to keep your wrists straight.
* Make sure that your elbow angle is 90 degrees or more to avoid nerve compression at the elbow.
* Make sure that your upper arm and elbow are as close to the body and as relaxed as possible for mouse use - avoid overreaching. Also make sure that your wrist is as straight as possible when the mouse is being used.
* Make sure that you sit back in the chair and that you have good back support - especially lumber support.
7. Alternative Input Devices
There are a number of alternative input devices you can use, instead of the mouse and keyboard, which you might find helpful. Examples are the trackball, a graphics table and pen, a touchpad, and even voice control.
RSI is a very serious health risk, especially with the young people who are coming to any industry sector that has continuous use of a PC. You need to take all the actions and preventions necessary to help minimize that risk.
Gerard Bulger is a part of the company http://www.threadbuilder.co.uk/ which creates Stress Buster the automated background program that monitors peoples computer usage and indicates when breaks should be taken to help alleviate RSI.
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