
Ask HN: Any programmers with long arms? - tboyd47
I know it&#x27;s a weird question, but I&#x27;ve been thinking about the years of shoulder and arm discomfort I&#x27;ve felt throughout my career. I&#x27;m beginning to think I have long arms.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>Does anyone else here on HN have this problem? Did you solve it, and if so, how?
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mod
There are guides you can find about how to position yourself.

Essentially, 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!

~~~
tboyd47
Yeah, I'm starting to think I may need to custom build a desk. Desk height is
a clear part of the problem. But I'm afraid that the best desk height for
preventing tension is going to be around where my knees end up.

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.

~~~
convolvatron
I'm not that tall, and I don't think my arms are long.

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

~~~
tedmiston
What do you do with your mouse?

~~~
convolvatron
i usually tape a trackball to the blank center of the kinesis

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bakedbean
6' guy here, I removed the arms from my chair and just let my arms hang
naturally while typing. This has made a world of difference.

I also invested in a standing desk recently and find myself standing about 1/2
the day, which has also helped quite a bit.

~~~
tboyd47
Interesting, so do have your elbows parallel to the desk surface or let them
hang down below it?

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zhte415
If the laptop is in your lap are you not hunched? Neck looking down a lot.

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.

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pasbesoin
I don't feel I have particularly "long arms", but years at bog-standard
corporate issue fixed height desks left me with worrying pains in my wrists.

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.

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tetha
Among the other topics here, I've found keyboards to be too narrow for myself.
I kinda need to put some weird tension on my elbows in order to use a laptop
keyboard properly.

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/](https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/freestyle2-for-pc-us/)

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itamarst
Have you tried a standing desk?

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/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/18/rsi-solution/)

~~~
tboyd47
I have not tried a standing desk. Does your standing desk have arm rests?

~~~
dzolvd
I use a convertible standing desk, and when standing I don't use arm rests.
The key is to have the desk/keyboard at a height where your shoulders hang
naturally. I used to have serious wrist issues and switching to the kinesis
advantage was the magic bullet for me. Also a big plus for exercises to help,
I do back flys to make sure to strengthen the muscles holding my shoulders
from rolling forward.

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.

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gt565k
6'2" guy here with long limbs and shoulder problems.

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...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/36r854/a_while_ago_someone_posted_a_manifesto_on_posture/)

Direct link to excel sheet:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EgKFYKjUIzpc_ZG_uRg1...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EgKFYKjUIzpc_ZG_uRg1pKM3D64UFZ14299K7ppatHU/edit#gid=1601259150)

~~~
tboyd47
Thanks. I tried doing corrective exercises but didn't find them to be any more
helpful for pain than regular cardio or a cup of coffee (which surprisingly
works pretty well as a pain killer)

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.

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roryisok
I'd suggest you try a standing desk for a few weeks. You can easily MacGyver
something together that will be the exact right height for you. Before I
committed fully and built a proper stander, I started out with a drawing board
on stacked books, and a monitor behind those.

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

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donbrote
Shoulders down. Palm (not wrist) rests. Fingers curved down. Ergo keyboard
with wells. Lap stand. Feet up!
[https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B09JtdOXm0JUpj](https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B09JtdOXm0JUpj)

~~~
tboyd47
Yes! That is what I need, right there.

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Artlav
6'8" tall, never in my life have i encountered a chair where my elbows would
reach the armrests, and most tables are too low for me to sit at comfortably.
Airplanes are the worst...

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.

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monknomo
I have this problem. It's exacerbated by co-sleeping with a baby, who is extra
demanding on my shoulders.

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.

------
tedmiston
> Every office chair and desk combination seems to have the arm rests sitting
> too high relative to my shoulders

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.

