Patent: Stowable Exercise Chair for Standing Desks

Haven’t we heard enough about the ill-effects of sitting down continuously for hours together? Of course, our desk jobs demand such extended hours of sitting down and working but the question is whether we are going to strive hard for a secure future (of diseases?) at the stake of our health! Research studies too demotivate us as many of them talk about the nullified advantaged of exercising owing to sitting continuously. Couch potatoes existed by choice during earlier decades put the present workforce have all become one with the rise of the IT dominance worldwide. People clock in exceedingly high hours of work, order pizzas for late-night dinners and again get back to work to finish up before the deadline. Whose deadline is it anyway-the client’s or our body’s? Employers started realizing the need to attend to the health requirements of their employees and started thinking on innovative terms-walking meetings became the standard and standing desks were added to each employer’s cubicle to enable him/her to get away from the sitting spree and go on a standing spree. Yet again, our researchers need something to probe into and they ultimately found that standing too long beats the ill effects of sitting continuously in terms of physical pain and other health issues. So, the ultimate solution is to find a sitting desk that allows you to stretch, bend and exercise even when you are working and the current patent invention exactly attends to this need.
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Not all of us have the right posture while sitting, walking or standing. Such wrongful postures or prolonged sitting/standing can aggravate back pain and even increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes. An employee is more bothered about the salary package, perks and office environment, the employer is bothered about deliverables, quality of work and more projects in hand but none bothers about ergonomics-the science of designing the workplace to optimize them for human use. There exists the dire need to design office furniture that solves the health problems related to seating arrangements that result in poor ergonomic postures and the lack of physical activity/movement. This is not something that has never been attempted by companies and there are chairs ergonomically designed but when it comes to standing desks, we lack ergonomic standing chairs that can support the employee when feeling fatigued and allow the user to take breaks from standing. The standing chairs that do exist have any of these problems-they occupy space even when they are not used, there is no smooth transition between sitting and standing or between different postures while sitting, the exercise benefits provided are almost negligible, foot rest position doesn’t suit ergonomic requirements or multiple footrest options are absent to suit the user in different positions or the seat doesn’t provide options to rotate the pelvis or support the spine in more than one healthy sitting or leaning position.

There are seating solutions provided by manufacturing companies that attend to some of the problems listed above but there is no one solution that takes care of all of them. Further, these solutions do not provide scope for any exercises while sitting nor come with an effective option to switch between sitting and standing that helps to stave off the health consequences of sitting down or standing up continuously. The present invention addresses all these problems and also enables active exercising in the form of sit-ups, back extension and stretching exercises.

The chair designed here corrects all the disadvantages of the ones available presently and also comes up with additional advantages that are not present in the ones that are available now. This chair has been rightly designed for standup use and can also be folded for compact storage and transport, promotes in-place exercising, comes with a design that allows easy transition between sitting and standing positions or even between different positions while sitting. There are provisions for doing sit-ups, back extensions and accessories can be added to address the needs of a full-body workout. Forward footrest is provided and an upper exercise bar too that helps in core body workouts. The chair has also been designed with a seating arrangement such that it provides fully adjustable pelvic rotation and the seat is ergonomically designed to suit any body shape. There are pegs at the center of the base that can support the user in a variety of standing positions. Aren’t these enough reasons to use such a chair in your office for your working purpose? The patent was published on October 4th, 2018 and for more intricate details on the invention you can visit any of the following sites:

United States Patent & Trademark Office: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=36&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&p=1&S1=((health+AND+exercise)+AND+fitness)&OS=health+AND+exercise+AND+fitness&RS=((health+AND+exercise)+AND+fitness)

European Patent Office: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=EPODOC&II=0&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=20181004&CC=WO&NR=2018183738A1&KC=A1

World Intellectual Property Organization: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US231410546&_cid=P22-JY6TIZ-79168-1