Currently, I have patients who are coming in to see me because they have lower back pain. This seems to be occurring more often due to Covid 19. They are sitting at their kitchen table working from home. They are sitting with a poor chair or poor desk setup and they are developing lower back pain. Their workouts are suffering. They are experiencing lower back pain performing deadlifts, squats and other activities. Something needs to be changed to help with this problem
Some people think maybe I need to change my chair, which does make some sense, since the major change is working from home rather than at work. I have patients ask me what kind of chair they should purchase? Maybe they should get a stability ball to sit on, maybe a kneeling chair or maybe a wobble chair.
I recently had an opportunity to review a wobble chair from Anthrodesk. Here is my review of that product.
** I was asked to review this product. They had me purchase the product and they reimbursed me the cost of the chair. No other money was given to write this review.**
Construction
When you buy this chair, it comes in four parts. There is the seat, a piston, a plastic collar that goes around the piston and the heavy base.
When we look at the seat, it’s not leather, it is a fabric of some sort. We can see cutouts for our thighs. We can see on the bottom three buttons. Those buttons control the piston. So when you are sitting, you don’t have to search for that button. Just put your hand under the seat and a button will be easy to find.
This chair only goes down as far as 22 inches and as high as 33 inches. The weight capacity of the piston is unknown
When we look at the base, the base is a rubber grip and it’s fairly heavy. So when I push it over it’s not very easy to make it fall. You’re not going to bump into it and have it fall over very easily.
Pros
This chair is very easy to put together. It takes only a few minutes to put it together as long as you are following the instructions.
The wobble chair appears to be made with good quality material. I’ve only had the chair for a month so I don’t know how long the material on the seat will last. But other than that, it looks really well put together.
This is chair a Weeble wobble. It is not going to fall over. You can walk by it, bump it, and it isn’t going to fall over. Check out the video to see how hard it is to fall over. The only way this chair will fall over is if you take your feet off the ground and continue to wobble to the extreme ranges of the chair.
Lastly, this this chair definitely promotes movement variety of the spine and hips. These joints deserve to move. Movement is the only way we keep our joints healthy.
Cons
When I started to still in the chair for a longer period of time the convex curve of the seat started to be uncomfortable to sit on. My wife experienced the same thing. Interestingly, there is research that finds that sitting on a stability ball can become uncomfortable for some people. Since the wobble chair’s seat is convex it will be similar to a stability ball. Therefore for some people this seat may be uncomfortable.
What is the weight capacity of the piston? I’ve not been able to find what it is. If you are heavier, this is something for you need to consider because you don’t want to buy this chair and then have to have it break because the piston is not designed for your weight.
Another con, again, is with regards to the seat. Whatever the material of the seat is made of it can be slick with dress pants. So slick that if you are using this as a high stool you might easily slip your backside off the chair when you try and sit down. I did that a few times
Lastly, in my case, this seat doesn’t go down far enough. I like to be able to sit in a chair that allows my hips to be in line with my knees. When sitting on this chair, my hips are a lot higher than my knees. I’m five foot four, so somebody shorter is going to have some difficulty. Because, I can’t have the seat lower this means my laptop ends up lower relative to my eyes. This causes me to slouch forward to get my eyes inline with the monitor. This isn’t the best position to be in for hours a day
Conclusion
I think this is a good quality chair if you are looking for a wobble chair. It will look better than an instability ball in your office and you will have more freedom of movement for your hips and spine. This could be a good a good chair for you, but it may not be a perfect fit for everyone.
Dr Notley
Originally posted on May 17, 2022 @ 4:39 pm