Many chair manufacturers proclaim “our chair is ergonomic.” It seems the more adjustments they offer, the bolder their claims. Some chairs offer up to 12 discrete adjustments to try and fit the chair to your body. We believe they simply provide increasingly elegant straight-jackets. No matter how many adjustments a chair has, to provide real back pain relief, the chair must enable natural human motion.
At SmartMotion, we’ve always believed in solving problems. When we first started building chairs, we attacked the problem of back pain caused by prolonged periods of sitting. The science tells us to move, but the demands of modern work require us to sit in front of a computer. Too often chair companies have pursued design awards to the detriment of actual users. It’s into this void, that SmartMotion brings the SmartMotion line of chairs, with beautiful aesthetics, wrapped around highly functional back pain relief, without touching even one control.
Only one US manufacturer can claim “our chairs have been cited in peer-reviewed, published papers as the premier example of what the chair of the future must provide: unrestricted natural human motion.” This is made possible by two unique features of the SmartMotion line of chairs:
- Unrestricted Motion – all SmartMotion chairs offer true counterbalanced motion. Where other chairs have springs which attempt to counterbalance the weight of the seated user, SmartMotion mechanisms position the center of movement of the chair proximate the user’s center of gravity. Like a pendulum, when your center of gravity shifts, SmartMotion rotates the position of the seat and backrest to maintain proper support
- Natural Human Motion – according to Kinesiology, the human body has certain natural motions. For example, the legs, hips and back work together to allow the pivotal motion that enables us to walk, swim and dance. This motion is called lumbo-pelvic rhythm. Only the SwingChair allows lumbo-pelvic rhythm and provides wonderful support to each user’s legs, hips and back as they effortlessly move through the full range of ANSI-recommended seated postures.
It is also noteworthy that in Europe, nationalized health care makes it easy (and necessary) to gather data to study health-related problems and control costs to the government and its taxpayers. Government and healthcare have long known that sedentary postures cause strain which can lead to cumulative trauma disorders such as back pain. And while sit-stand is all the rage in the US, emerging facts no longer support standing as the ideal way to work. In fact, increasingly the data recommends that programmers, knowledge workers, anyone who performs better while seated, take quick stretch breaks frequently during long periods of sitting.
SwingChair Features a Full Range of ANSI-HFES 100 Postures
SmartMotion Technology Uses Science-Based Natural Human Motion
See the Original SwingChair in Action. The SmartMotion Mechanism uses the Same Technology.
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Anatomical, physiological and health Considerations relevant to the SwingChair™
Rani Lueder, CPE
Dynamic stability of the trunk during unstable sitting in people with low back pain
M Freddolini, S Strike and RYW Lee
University of Roehampton, London, UK
Rethinking sitting, seating and symptoms: new findings
Jenny Pynt PhD (USyd)
The Education for Practice Institute CSU
Improving Field Observation of Spinal Posture in Sitting
John Fitzsimmons