Standing desks are expensive. I've wanted one for about 10 years but could never justify the cost to myself. For the last couple of years I've been dealing with chronic pain from injuries that don't seem to want to heal and bad posture, so I'm doing everything in my power now to fix my body cos I have stuff I want to do in my life and these injuries are holding me back. So I've swallowed my reservations and bought a standing desk.
I thought long and hard about this and looked into alternatives first because the price is so offputting: Standing desks generally retail at upwards of £300, and some even go over £1000. Desk risers - which are either like a bed tray on stilts or a bizarre plywood house of cards structure cost upwards of £60 quid. DIY options of piling up books or placing a chair on the table were not viable options for me. If I've learned anything in the last 37 years on this earth dealing with myself, it's that I need to make good habits SO easy it's actually harder to not do them.
If I want to exercise I put my trainers and gym stuff where my feet land when I get out of bed and my slippers and comfy cardigan the other end of the room in a cupboard.
I need to be able to just push a button to go up and down because if I have to deconstruct an entire desk situation every 45 mins I'm just not going to bother.
I’m very lucky I have access to an incredible osteopath. But each session costs me £60 and both of us would like it better if we didn’t have to see eachother so often. The way I justified the cost of a standing desk to myself was calculating how many osteopathic sessions it might help me to offset.
I already had a decent tabletop that fit my space perfectly - if you saw my previous post about my cozy boho desk setup you'll have seen my desk there. A quick search on Amazon led me to discover that there are base-only options for standing desks which saved me having to trim down another top to fit my space. I eventually settled on one by the brand Madesite which cost me just £160!. I was a bit skeptical because it was so cheap - 'if it looks too good to be true, it probably is' etc. But I took a deep breath and ordered it. and prepared myself to be disappointed
The first thing I will say is these things are phenomenally heavy.
Assembly was piss-easy - It was a bit time consuming because I was using my existing desk surface so had to mark and pre-drill all the holes as well as cutting a wedge out of the side of the table so it didn't hit my windowsill on the way up and down.
The casing that holds the electric adapter thing is extremely flimsy plastic and mine arrived broken - not unusable by any means, but a chunk of it had broken off in the box. As it sits under my desk and I don't have to look at it I don't really care - it's still perfectly functional, but it's at odds with the rest of the desk unit which is actually really nice build quality. It's very quiet zimming up and down and I love that it has programmable heights. Because I have my little drawers under my desk I was scared to do it manually in case I overegged it and then broke the desk, but programming it was easy and now I just press '1' and it glides to a halt 5mm above my drawers.
Are standing desks worth the investment?
YES.
Within one day of use I already noticed a difference in my lower back.
Part of my problems are caused by my posture - a neck injury totally threw my whole posture out and I ended up with my right shoulder up round my ear like Liza Minnelli.
After being stuck like that for over a year it became habitual to hoik my shoulder up without realising, which causes a lot of tension in my neck and triggers a cascade of issues including slipping rib syndrome. Being very sedentary over the last two years because of my injuries has also given me incredibly tight hip flexors which somehow tugs on my diaphragm (according to my osteopath) so my breathing isn’t as good as it could be. I look younger than I am but my 80 year old dad is in better condition than I am - and more active!
This desk is helping.
It's also nice to just have some variety to your day - being chained to a desk in one position is so hard on your body everything just stiffens up - with a standing desk you're still able to do what you need to do quite comfortably, and you're fidgeting around a lot. I stand on one leg in tree pose sometimes, sometimes I have one foot up behind me on the bed which is right behind my desk, and stretch out my hip flexors, Some times I shift my weight from one foot to the other. I stretch and bend and swing my arms around a lot when I'm stooding too.
Will a standing desk it magically fix your posture?
No. No, only you can do that with being more aware of your body and practising good posture techniques and exercises. I still find that even when I'm standing up, if I'm concentrating on detail work or trying to figure out how to do something, I stand hunched over with my elbows on the desk and wiith my neck jutting forward like Oogway in Kung Fu Panda
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So in summary, I'm only on my first week of using this desk but so far it's two thumbs up from me, and I expect it, and my body are only going to get better with time!
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