Designer or Coder = Back Problems? Standing Desk Review & More

Key Takeaways

today I'm going to be reviewing a standing desk and a standing desk floor mat that it's going to hopefully help save your back hey everyone what's up Gary Simon of course at Rome so today we're gonna be stepping outside of the usual screencasts and into the realm of health which is a first for this channel but specifically we're going to talk about back health now for me about ten years ago I started getting lower back pain on and off and partly due to certain lifting habits that I had but also because ever since I've been 12 or 13 when I started sitting behind a computer I've been sitting down for a lot of the day and what eventually ends up happening I'm almost 36 I mean thirty-six next month I'm an old bastard at this point I what ends up happening when you get near my age you're gonna notice if you don't start correcting these issues such as posture you're gonna have lower back pain now just about seven weeks ago I visited a chiropractor and after one of the adjustments it really hurt my back and so bad to the point where every time I would go to stand up I had a lot of pain in my lower back and the side of my butt near what's called the piriformis muscle anyhow long story short all of this really started to make me start to investigate what is proper posture what should I be doing if I'm sitting behind a computer for a very long time like I usually am I and what this led me to is what I'm gonna be reviewing in this video which is a standing desk from apex desk comm as well as a floor mat from Peugeot driven called topo there's another product as well that I'm also going to review although it's not sponsored so let's go ahead and take a look at the standing desk itself so this desk right here is my new standing desk from apex desk comm and it's a 71 inch long desk and it is motorized so the height is adjustable by simply me clicking on one of the four different buttons for the memory feature or an up and down arrow which will raise the desk or lower the desk it's very very cool I so why would you even want a standing desk and I'm sure you've probably seen the other desks of variations where it's just a platform that you put your monitors on that can you know that's perfectly fine as well but this whole desk increases with everything that's on it so the reason I got it is specifically for the back issues I just don't like sitting for a long time and I like the option of being able to stand and work at the same time and so it's really beneficial for your back if you can vary things up and say you're not always just hunched over all right it goes all the way up to 48 inches and which is perfect for me I'm 6 1 and it still can go higher than what I even prefer to go and it can go all the way down to 29 inches which is perfect for me as well and I have two monitors down here and then a third monitor is actually attached with an Ergo driven arm right here and that's my walk constant Inc which I hardly ever use anymore I also have my two studio monitors and for those of you who don't know there's a basically heavy very heavy high-powered speakers for music production which is something I do in my part-time and this thing has a capacity to hold over 225 pounds and I'm sure I'm not even close to that and so when I raise this desk it raises very easily and it's quite quick as you can see as well now when I hurt my back I also went to physical therapy for about five sessions and they recommended what's called a McKenzie foam or lumbar support pillow and it's this thing right behind here you can't see it I'm gonna show b-roll footage of it and it's also up here on the screen on Amazon I'll link this as well but basically it's very simple you don't even have to buy something like this you could use something like a towel I it helped tremendously for the type of pain that I was having during that injury I can also tell though when I use it just for everyday use or when I'm sitting behind a computer I bought three of them actually they're in my car as well two of my vehicles I could tell that I just feel better my lower back feels a lot better when I use it so I definitely recommend this as well now the next product is something called topo by a company called Peugeot driven and it's basically a standing desk mat so when I got to standing desk I didn't know that I would want something like this but when I first started to use the standing desk and I was in the stained position after about 10 minutes my feet started to hurt so it's it's pretty common as I researched to have this mat as well that goes along with it and it's just basically a thick piece of foam and it has different edges and contours that makes standing so much easier on your feet and it's really nice filling and I get I'm always finding myself just adjusting my feet my feet position based on the different areas and the contours of the mat so I really recommend that as well if you're going to get a standing desk it's awesome alright so that's it for this video your back is no joke and a if you're younger you're probably scoffing at this you don't care about it very much but I'm telling you it will catch up to you if you have bad posture and so you know this back thing right here the pillow the lumbar support pillow I wish I would have used this a long time ago along with starting to work with standing desks as well and being in a standing standing position now if you do have this lower back pain around what's called like the l5 region of your back one of the things that one of the exercises that I've done that's helped me tremendously is based on Mackenzie so if you type in Mackenzie back exercises you're gonna find what's called press ups and you can even get in a standing position I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this to demonstrate it and what I found out is that when I did these the press-ups on the floor as well as the standing variation my back pain within several days started to get so much better so that's just a tip I wanted to throw out there so definitely check out apex desk comm as well as the Ergo driven topo mat and also the McKenzie lumbar pillow all right I'll see you guys soon goodbye [Music] [Music]