Treadmill workstations at office can reduce muscle strains

A kinesiology researcher has found ways to prevent the kinds of muscular and skeletal stresses and pains that can affect one in ten office workers at some point in their careers.

Professor at the McGill University, Julie Cote said that even though office workers may not naturally see it that way, their body was basically their work instrument, just as it is for an athlete.

She added that it could get injured in similar ways and for similar reasons like overuse of certain muscles and these workstations may be good for getting people moving and losing weight but no one has looked into how this kind of posture affects the muscles in the neck, shoulders and lower back.

The researchers discovered that there was lower but more variable neck and shoulder muscle activity when subjects were walking compared with sitting.

They concluded that treadmill work stations would potentially be helpful in reducing the neck and shoulder muscle pain associated with computer work.

Cote, who herself faced the similar workplace problem, said that whether a person was a computer worker or a middle-distance runner, injuries happened when they tense a particular muscle or group of muscles for too long, halting the flow of blood into the region as it should and regenerate the muscles.

The research is published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.