- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck Physical Therapist.
- And together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Brad, my sister had Facebooked me the other day.
I think that's how you say it.
And she asked me the question, is it okay to
use these exercise balls or physio balls as a chair at work?
- Yeah, because there's information that
you know, you use the exercise ball at work it's
gonna give you a better posture.
It's gonna save your back, et cetera, et cetera.
- Right.
And so we're gonna kind of go by the points, point by point
of whether or not you should use these as a chair at work.
- Right.
- And these are based on studies.
I've seen, I saw a couple studies on it.
So one thing that one of the advantages of the chair
is supposed to be, you're already off the chair.
You don't like it, do you?
- Oh, that's too low for me, Bob.
- All right.
Well, let's talk about that, Brad.
First. What should be the height on this?
- If you do, do this, make sure you get a ball.
- This one's too Soft.
- Look at me once here.
Look how high my knees are comparing to my hips.
- Right? If you draw a line from here to here
or if you look at the femur it should be parallel
to the floor.
- Level.
- His knees are higher than his hips.
So he needs a much bigger ball.
- I would've have to be way up like this.
- Right. And you gotta pump him up.
This is way too soft here.
This one more firm, quite a bit more firm, but
- It's still way too low.
- Yeah.
- So, you know, first off, if you're gonna do it
you're gonna want to have it fit right.
- Right.
- But, I think by the end of this video
hopefully you're not gonna want to do this at all,
be honest with yourself.
So the first thing is, do you burn calories
or do you get more exertion when you're on here?
The studies have shown that the exertion
when you're in a chair, an exertion
when you're on a ball is about the same.
So no advantage there.
- Right.
- So next one is that they thought that people
would generally have better posture when they sit on a chair
On a ball.
- Right. Without thinking about it, it's gonna
promote good posture.
- And what they found out is that after a while
people just tended to slump even more.
And actually their posture was often worse.
And I have a friend that wrote an entire book
believe it or not, on seating and posture.
And he said, one of the critical things with seating
is that you have support right here on the sacrum,
they call it, not the low back but right below that
right on the sacrum.
And that helps you really give you support
and prevents back pain.
Well this obviously doesn't give you any support
there at all.
- Right. - Brad saw it.
They talked about whether or not a lot of times
they just would be more comfortable being
on a ball like this.
And what did the study show?
- I don't know what the study showed Bob
but I'm not sitting on it because of a good reason.
It's not comfortable for me.
- Yeah. And that's what the study has showed
too more discomfort.
Now, the only one advantage of the ball is
that people did burn more calories when they sat on it.
But how many per hour, Brad?
- Four. - Four.
Four Lousy calories per hour, so.
- I think you burn more chewing gum.
- Yeah. Probably you know, 30 calories a day.
And so with all the other disadvantages, I don't
know how you could look at this as being a major advantage.
- Right.
- And the last thing is kind of a safety issue, Brad.
I mean, when you're on a ball like this
and you reach for a piece of paper
I mean now, you go, you know what I mean?
- Exactly. And if Bob got a ball, I mean this big
when he is not in the chair or on a ball doing his work
it's gonna be rolling around.
They do make chairs where you can put the ball.
- Put the base as yeah, the kind of bases you can put.
Or you get chairs right too, I think they're even.
- Right. Yeah. They I've got one at work.
Yeah. Some of the nurses use it and I kind of giggle
about it and I've tried it, you put it in there
and it holds the ball in wall and there's wheels.
You can roll around on it.
There's actually a back post on it
but I don't think it even compares, you know
my personal opinion with posture.
It's-
- Just for me sitting right now there, Brad, I feel
like I need to do some extension stuff.
Yeah. I feel like my back is kind of a little
outta whack already just from sitting on here.
- Now don't get me wrong at all.
I think this is the best tool you can buy
for the price for exercising, strengthening range of motion
but just for seated long term posture.
- I think I'll put up one of your videos, Brad
on core strengthens, Brad did a lot of these.
Brad is very good at using the ball for strengthening
and it they're an excellent tool for that.
- Right.
- And you'll, if I'll put up one of our favorite ones
here and you'll watch that, you'll see that they're good
for that, but they just aren't good for sitting at work.
- Right.
Very good.
We can fix anything, but Hey,
- Broken heart can't fix it. - Better believe it.
- Dammit