Compared to a control group, stretching and resistance exercises performed over a four week period were felt to reduce neck/back discomfort by nearly a three fold margin among 72 office workers. Despite this high level of satisfaction, little difference was seen in subjective symptom measurement between experiment groups at study conclusion.
Study Design
Volunteers consisting of 56 females and 16 males were recruited from several office settings (university administration offices, an insurance company, a physical therapy reception desk, and a software development firm). The subjects ranged in age from 21 to 61 and worked at least three hours per day on a desktop computer for at lease a month prior to the start of the study.
Subjects were assigned to either a:
- resistance exercise group
This article originally appeared in The Ergonomics Report™ on 2007-03-08.