Swopper Stool: A closer look

Swopper Special EditionThe Swopper stool offers a unique sitting experience. It provides a completely different approach to the way you sit and at first sight may well seem a little odd. So what is this slightly strange looking seat all about?

What exactly is the Swopper stool?
At the heart of the Swopper design is a spring loaded height adjustable upright. Unlike other types of seat this enables you to enjoy a degree of springiness as you sit, helping to eliminate any feeling of harshness. And just in case you might think that you'll be bouncing around all over the place this is adjustable to suit your own body weight. So you decide how much bounce to use.

Additionally the stool is designed to be used at an angle. This is one of its design benefits because it lets you sit with a much more open angle between your upper body and legs.

Opening up your sitting angle is a much healthier way to work than the typical right angled sitting experience of an office chair.

Why is the Swopper a healthier way of sitting?
One of the problems with most conventional office seats is they don't tend to allow sufficient body movement particularly in the lower back and legs. Over time this weakens your muscle structure.

The great thing about a Swopper stool is the way it opens up your sitting angle. This helps to keep your body much more active as you sit. In fact it is a dynamic way of sitting. The spring built into the upright provides a very welcome cushioning effect. This improves sitting comfort as well as keeping muscles exercised and on the move.

The open angle sitting position places your back in a proper healthy posture.

As well as the springing effect the stool also moves from side to side as you transfer the direction of your body weight. This makes sure muscles are kept active as you sit, giving them vital exercise so they don't tire or stiffen up.

This subtle muscle movement also helps to keep your spine joints lubricated and improve muscle strength and tone. It's almost like a mini workout as you sit.

In case you're thinking sitting like this is unstable, it's actually very stable. This is because the base combined with your legs form a solid anchor even when you move quickly from side to side or forwards and back. As the seat swivels it's easy to get a wide range of movement around your workspace

What are the different Swopper options and adjustments?
The Swopper stool comes in 2 choices of frame color, Anthracite (charcoal grey) and Titanium (silver grey) with matching spring. There is a huge range of seat upholstery options with over 115 fabrics and 15 leather finishes to choose from.

The standard base comes with glide feet and this is suitable for use with a normal workstation. There is an alternative wheeled base (Anthracite only). This has rollers built into the base and would be useful where you have a large corner type workstation and need to move around it frequently.

All stools can be adjusted for sideways movement via a simple adjuster at the base of the Swopper. Simply place the stool upside down and turn the adjuster on the base towards the plus sign for more sideways movement or minus for less movement. To begin with it's best to restrict sideways movement as you get used to it. Then increase it for more movement as you get accustomed to this new way of working.

To adjust spring tension you place the stool back on its base. Then using the wheel adjuster at the bottom of the upright stem turn it to set it to exactly what is most comfortable for you. It has a weight guide printed on the side so you can quickly see any changes you make.

The stool is designed for user weighing up to 290lbs. It has a 5 year warranty, although some parts like the seat foam, structural components and non-moving parts have a lifetime warranty.

Quick Tip: Adding desk height

Our last Quick Tip looked at adding height to your desk to accommodate your chair. This week we have a great tip for you taller standing desk users: just add wheels.

The Adjustable Desk 129 (found here) is one of the tallest desks on the market, rising to 51”-52” or more depending on the thickness of your desk top. If your standing elbow height is greater than 51” one way to add another 3” of height to your desk is simply to add casters. This of course will work for anyone looking to add a little bit of height to their desk, not to mention mobility. As we mentioned last time, ESI makes desk risers to give your fixed-height desk a lift and they can be used on your height-adjustable desk as well.

And the experts agree...

Two years ago the New York Times published a roundtable discussion of professional ergonomists along with other experts in the field on whether sitting is really that bad for you. Their answers? A collection of resounding "Yes!" responses.

How to deal with the inevitability of sitting for eight+ hours per day, on the other hand, was not as cut and dried. The thread tying the responses together was the idea that we all need to move more throughout our day. Of course, if you've visited our blog before you won't be surprised to learn that we totally agree.

If you haven't already, check out the article here. Or, if you prefer the CliffsNotes, a couple of highlights are below.

Galen Cranz, UC Berkeley:

...some postures are better than others. The neutral body posture, as NASA calls it, is half way between sitting and standing; it balances our musculature between front and back...Also called the perch position, it requires a higher than currently conventional desk, not a standing desk, but definitely higher than 28 inches.

Jack Dennerlein, Harvard School of Public Health:

Get up and move frequently.

Peter T. Katzmarzyk, Pennington Biomedical Research Center:

The take-home message should be that the more time we spend out of the chair, the healthier we are likely to be.

Another day, another study

USA Today released an article on a new report which links sitting too long to breast cancer and colon cancer. While this isn't news to many of our clients, the health risks of prolonged sitting are slowly creeping their way into the national conscious.

Alpa Patel of the American Cancer Society commented on the study:

In a study of 123,000 people, she found that the more time people spent sitting, the higher their risk of dying early. "Even among individuals who were regularly active, the risk of dying prematurely was higher among those who spent more time sitting," she says.

Even if you are doing half an hour of aerobic activity a day, you need to make sure you don't sit the rest of the day, Patel says. "You have to get up and take breaks from sitting."

We couldn't agree more.

While it's tough to step away from your desk during the day, making small adjustments to the way you work is more important than ever.

Active Sitting: Saddle up!

For more in our active sitting series, click here for our saddle seat introduction, and here for our active sitting introduction.

It’s probably obvious we’re big fans of the HAG Capisco, but many other saddle seats such as Via’s Swopper, Swopper, by Viathe Varier Move stool, and the Bambach saddle seat offer nearly identical benefits as the Capisco.

The Swopper is one the more fun saddle seats on the market. Its spring mechanism encourages not just movement but actual bouncing. Many users find the Swopper similar to the experience of working on an exercise ball, but without the hassle of pumping it up once a week plus the added flexibility to vary your seat height as needed.

The Varier Move stool is one of the most popular saddle chair options for people with a taller work surface. The Move stool offers the perfect amount of support for workers who want to take a break from standing and perch on their seat for a spell. The concave bottom allows you to lean forward on the saddle, as opposed to just sitting on top of the seat, further opening the hip angle. The Move stool is also designed to encourage repositioning your weight and rebalancing yourself throughout the day. Again, similar to an exercise ball, but actually designed for sitting.

Move stool, by Varier 

Bambach saddle seatLast, and certainly not least, is the Bambach saddle seat. Specifically designed to minimize many common complaints associated with extended sitting (neck, shoulder, and back pain), this Australian-designed saddle seat is quickly becoming one of our most popular saddle seats. For horse or motorcycle riders the saddle on this chair will feel very familiar. For those of you who are used to slouching your way through your work day, the Bambach saddle seat hardly gives you a chance.

This all sounds great, but my lower back isn’t in good shape and I don’t think I could make it without lumbar support.

Point well-taken.

The long and short of it is: when your spine is properly aligned, lumbar support (in the form of a backrest) isn’t necessary. That’s not to say sitting back and relaxing is something to be avoided at all costs, but it’s important to recognize why back support is present in traditional task chairs, and absent in most saddle seats and kneeling chairs. When we move away from the 90° sitting angle, to something closer to 130°, the lower part of the spine that creates the “S” shape is able to fully support the upper body. When we are sitting with a 90° angle the pelvis is positioned in a way that straightens out (rather than maintains the curve) this crucial part of our spine.

This advice works for many people, but not for everyone. If you have any type of medical issue involving the back, hips, or any other area affected while you are seated, we would strongly advise consulting with a medical professional on your specific situation.