Guru, can gadgets sort my poor posture?
AGuru has a hunch (ha!) that you’re not a professional volleyball player or one of those flipping parkourists, and that you spend much of your time as GaGu does: sat at a desk. This is just about the worst thing you can do for your poor skeleton beyond tearing it out and playing its ribs like a xylophone, and yet we all do it.
Solution one, then: change your gear. Get a standing desk, or try the cardboard Ergodriven Spark (around £20) or something more substantial like the £330 StarTech Standing Desk Converter – these can turn any old surface into something you can stand at.
If you’re going to sit, park your rear on something that encourages that good sittin’, rather than a dodgy office chair you found in a skip. That one’s a rare freebie from Guru’s long-suffering osteopath, by the way. Look to the gaming world for the best seats; bucket chairs from the likes of AK Racing will encourage you to sit properly rather than slumping forward. Once you’re properly nestled, make sure you stay that way with the Darma smart cushion ($199, or around £160), which cusses you out via a Bluetoothconnected app when it detects you flopping about like a moody teenager.
Since posture is, in most cases, a muscular thing, long-term improvement comes from moving around in the right way. Ensuring you stay straight when erect is a slightly trickier gadget task, though. You could try the Lumo Lift (£59.99), a clip-on activity tracker that keeps tabs on the angle of your upper body and discreetly nudges you when it notices you collapsing in on yourself. Lumo’s Run (£89.99) goes a few steps further, clipping to your waistband and aligning with your lower spine so you can pull off perfect posture while you jog. If you fancy something more conspicuous, the Alex N5 (£59) dangles from your ears and rests on your neck, storing up to four weeks of slouching data in internal memory.
park your rear on something which encourages good sitt in’, rather than a dodgy chair you found in a skip