Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Last weekend I was a little bit overenthusiastic with my exercise regime and managed to hurt my back. Thankfully, it wasn’t serious, just one of those aches that makes you wonder why you ever bothered trying to get fit in the first place, if you were just going to spend the rest of the weekend lying inert.

While my bones and muscles were working out the correct way to fit together, I decided to spend some quality time on the consoles playing games that involve little movement except for my thumbs. In any case, I settled down on my dedicated gaming sofa.

Everyone has a place where they park themselves for a game. It may be a sofa, it may be a bed, it may even be a squishy beanbag. My particular gaming space is a sofa with a complicated arrangement of pillows and an accompanying blanket, one of those ‘snuggie’ or ‘slanket’ ones that looks like a fleece you’re wearing backwards. Laugh all you want, but blankets with sleeves are perfect for playing video games. No need to poke your hand out of warmth to turn up the volume, for example.

The first step was to adjust the cushions and pillows to prop me up. Cushions soften the awkward shape of the sofa’s arm and a pink beanbag pillow served to keep my head up so that I could look at the screen easily. The sleeved-blanket was on and within reach were the necessary snacks and beverages. Wonderfully settled in, I then proceeded to play for several hours without moving anything except for my thumbs.

Sitting down was perfectly fine, or rather leaning against my pillows was perfectly fine. But then when it came to move off the sofa, to go and have something more substantial to eat than Pringles, the pain was awful. After spending such a long time sitting down, and worst of all, slouching, my hunched shoulders becoming more pronounced as time went on, my already tender back was positively raw. Well, perhaps I over-exaggerate but it was damn painful and there were quite a few cracks of the spine.

If you have a friendly Wii Fit trainer (I call him Chuck) then you’ll be used to him rabbiting on about proper balance and posture while he encourages you to wobble precariously on one leg. If you don’t have a Chuck, then you may have that crick in your neck, that twinge in your spine or the cramp in your leg that tells you you’re not sitting properly, or you at least need to shift yourself out of that butt-groove you’ve carved into your seat, at least for a little while. We can all speak from experience of the discomfort that results when you finally have to get up if you haven’t been sitting correctly for a while, or even just sitting for too long. I got so absorbed in conquering kingdoms in Little King’s Story and decapitating angels in Bayonetta that I spent the rest of my time in bed lying flat because no other way was comfortable. Which meant no more Wii, no more Xbox.

It’s not so bad though, since this story has a happy gaming ending. I own a DS Lite after all! Still, my arms started to hurt from holding it up to play while lying flat on my back. Seems I can’t win…