Ask HN: Any programmers with long arms?
It always feels like my arms are too long to find a comfortable position, not just while programming but also while driving a car. Every office chair and desk combination seems to have the arm rests sitting too high relative to my shoulders, which increases the tension in my shoulders and upper arms, leading to intense, lasting pain. I can never seem to adjust my chair to a comfortable position. I've finally been able to minimize the problem by seating my laptop on my lap and using the built-in keyboard and trackpad, ditching the mouse completely, but the pain still comes and goes from time to time because of angled position I have to hold my hands in to type with the keyboard so close to me.
Does anyone else here on HN have this problem? Did you solve it, and if so, how?
28 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 74.4 ms ] threadEssentially, you want your forearms to be parallel to the ground, and your upper arms just resting normally along your sides.
Next, you get your chair the right height. Again, there are guides, but mostly you want your feet touching the ground.
Then you determine your desk height, which is dictated by what's needed to keep your arms parallel to the ground. Desk height, though, is the hardest to alter typically, so you may find that to avoid hassle you end up adjusting your chair height. Not ideal, though.
I'm also 6' tall, but I've never had any obvious problems getting into a comfortable position with normal desks. You shouldn't either, even if you have long arms. Just find the proper setup. I now have a desk I custom-built for myself. I did measure myself first, but I chose a traditional height for the top--something like 29".
For what it's worth, it can be difficult (and uncomfortable) to change your habits in the beginning, if your posture needs adjusting. I'm a slouch and it is not easy to sit up straight for very long.
Good luck!
I don't have long arms, but I'm also 5'8" - even still, I have the right desk height, monitor height, chairs, etc. I'm now at a fixed standing desk, which I chose because an adjustable desk meant I'd always choose to sit, but none of this is one size fits all. Always measure!
Start with your chair, since your legs are a fixed length. Your chair height should depend on that, not your desk height.
Then hold your arms out at the appropriate level and measure to the floor. That is your top-of-keyboard height, so your desk top should probably be about an inch shorter than that.
Then just ensure your desk has clearance for your legs given the heights. For my custom desk, I had to cut short the apron as I had made it too tall.
Also realize that you have some leeway in the angle of your legs and arms, and that you really must be sitting up straight. (Ask someone if you are!)
The chair will be difficult, because in order to not have arm tension I'll have to have them resting almost down to where my hip bone is. I can't say I've ever seen a chair with arm rests that low.
I'm realizing that the key issue for me, ergonomically, is the "arm rest," which is really not a good name because it is impossible to truly "rest" my arm on one, meaning relax the muscles.
but for me having no armrests and keeping my keyboard in my lap (its a shorter kinesis with wells) is the best position to avoid wrist, elbow, and shoulder strain. so I don't really care about the desk height, only the monitor height.
plus with the keyboard on my lap like that I get to shift around in my seat
I have to respectfully disagree.
Unless your elbows are level with the tops of your legs, when seated, then this will not be the case. Most desks are only something like 3/4" thick (that's the thickness of mine), and you will almost certainly have at least that much of a gap. If you don't, make sure you're sitting up straight.
> I can't say I've ever seen a chair with arm rests that low.
Get one without armrests, or take them off. On my chair they're adjustable, and the lower setting is approximately level with the top of my hip bone. However, that is a couple of inches too short. Again, ensure you are sitting up straight (and get your shoulders rolled back, if you slouch). Proper posture is by far the most important part of this whole equation--coming from someone with piss-poor posture!
I have this chair, and taking the arms off would take me, I think, under a minute: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q5XTE8/ref=oh_aui_sear...
I found it recommended in a thread here on HN for chairs. It's basically an Aeron ripoff and I don't have any complaints about it, after a year.
Sitting and typing on a computer is unnatural, and causes shoulders to roll forward. There really isn't any other cure other than stretching, doing yoga, and performing strengthening exercises.
It's unfortunate, but many in our profession choose to ignore the cons of being mostly stationary, often involving a bad posture, for most of our working day.
Here's a pretty good resource for addressing a lot of the bad posture problems and corrective exercises:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/36r854/a_while_ago...
Direct link to excel sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EgKFYKjUIzpc_ZG_uRg1...
I'm shifting my thinking more towards attacking the problem at the source, which I'm starting to see as the sustained tension of holding my arms in keyboard position. I never had this issue from, say, sitting and playing Nintendo as a teenager for hours, which you could also argue is unnatural.
I am short, and my arms don't seem long... but I've had shoulder pain and arm pain. Things that have helped:
1. Staying warm! Air conditioning is your enemy.
2. Standing desk. Make sure you have separate levels for monitor and keyboard, so you can put keyboard at exactly right height. Also get a good mat, or your feet and back will hurt.
Long version: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/18/rsi-solution/
My girlfriend has to use a chair with no arms because of her arm to torso height ratio makes arm rests force her shoulders up. Which I think is the same issue you are facing.
I also invested in a standing desk recently and find myself standing about 1/2 the day, which has also helped quite a bit.
Posture, particularly sitting up straight, and holding my hands in the correct typing position, helps a lot. Making sure my monitors are at eye level and are directly in front of me is critical.
Sometimes, if I get lazy and slouch, my shoulder will get a bad pain and my pinkies will go numb, which is generally a sign of pinching a nerve. It takes quite a bit of fiddling to get the desk-monitor-chair heights all adjusted just so.
From there, getting a Kinesis Freestyle was an amazing investment. It seems silly, but the ability to position your keyboard so you don't have to bend your wrists outwards, and so you don't have to put some tension on your elbows is amazing, especially with wide shoulders and long arms.
And yes, on top of that, arm rests are the devil.
[1]https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/freestyle2-for-pc-us/
It sounds like an ergonomics problem. Try a chair with adjustable arm rests. And perhaps a keyboard tray to keep that down low so your arms can be roughly parallel to the ground.
At home i solved the problem by raising the tables to a "normal" height. Can probably do the same with the armrests, but i'm too used to them never existing to bother. At works i could usually lower the chair way down to get things comfortable.
While it's the opposite of your problem, i suspect the spectrum of solutions would be the same - make a lot of custom stuff.
On my first employer's onboarding training we had a full 4 hour session by the company's health & safety officer on how to use our chair and desk, and I've found that extremely useful over the past 15 years.
Some takeaways that I've kept with me:
* Keep the top bezel of the screen level with your eyes. I.e. no bending next to see top of screen, and use eyes to look/scan down, or neck a bit.
* Most office chairs have a knob under where you sit and a latch to pull out on the back allowing inclination/declination/free movement. Set latch to free movement then twist this the knob to a setting where you're lying back in the chair in a free-balance position - equilibrium easy to find. I like to leave me chair in that position.
* Fortune 500 type companies spent a lot of money trying to avoid being sued. White-label chairs are commonplace and far higher quality than alternatives.
* Desks can be adjusted or swapped out for alternatives.
* Consult your health & safety person if you have a persistent problem, or in-house medical staff. Just let your manager know you're contacting them, not related to work.
* If you'd like to sit on a bouncy ball, that's OK too.
This was not a modern technology company or anything faddish. This was advice built up over decades of his experience and a century+ of organisational existence. Just share some 2p.
Keyboard should be at or just below elbow height, and the top bezel of your monitor should be at eye level, so your head is very slightly inclined downward. I've read that this has something to do with our hunter gatherer past, that we're built to walk, scanning the ground ahead of us for food. You may want to put some fruit in your line of vision to simulate this
I've dealt with this by setting my chair height so my thighs are pretty much horizontal, then setting my desk height so that when I am sitting, typing, my forearms are horizontal or nearly horizontal.
I also use a laptop whose palm rest is not huge/deep, so that the front edge is not pressing against/into my wrists, particularly when I am somewhere else and don't have control over the height of the work surface (nor the chair, sometimes). I like the somewhat older Thinkpads for having a palm rest that is not too deep and that has a rounded front edge, e.g. +420, +520 (barely), ++30.
When using a desktop PC with a keyboard, I place a gel wrist rest directly in front of the keyboard -- making sure the final result matches my height/posture/ergonomic preferences. My PALMS rest on the wrist -- ok, palm -- rest, not my wrists.
I mention this last with regard to your situation. I you can get a keyboard / palm rest / posture combination that leaves the ends of your arms resting rather neutrally on your palms, while you type, this might help?
P.S. As I got more senior and less caring in corporate land, I sometimes just brought in some tools and rebuilt my desk, myself (off-hours), to get it to the height I preferred. Going through formal channels might make this a misery, but people wouldn't bother with the fact that I'd "just done it", as long as the work was getting done.