Biomechanics, applied to the eight hours you spend at a desk

I'm Rama Krishna Reddy Guduru. I hold a PhD in biomechanics from Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, and I work as a research-track academic in biomedical engineering. My field is musculoskeletal load — how force moves through a body, which tissue ends up carrying it, and how you measure that rather than guess at it.

Day to day that means surface electromyography, three-dimensional motion capture, wearable inertial sensors, myotonometry, and musculoskeletal modelling in OpenSim and AnyBody. I've published twenty peer-reviewed papers, hold a patent, and review manuscripts for three journals.

Why this site exists

Desk ergonomics is unusual among health topics in that the underlying mechanics are genuinely well understood, and almost none of that understanding reaches the people it would help. What reaches them instead is a diagram with a red cross through a slouching figure and a number nobody has checked.

I can read the primary literature, tell a modelled estimate from a measurement, and say plainly when a claim that everyone repeats rests on a single paper. That is the whole value proposition here. There is no shortage of people telling you to sit up straight; there is a shortage of people willing to show you the study and its limitations.

The editorial rules

• Every number is cited. If a figure appears here, the paper it came from is named, and you can go and disagree with it.
• Modelled and measured are labelled differently. A finite element output and an instrument reading are not the same kind of claim, and conflating them is how most posture misinformation starts.
• Weak evidence gets called weak. A lot of what people want answered has thin or conflicting literature behind it. Saying so is more useful than picking whichever study agrees with the headline.
• Corrections are made in public. If something here is wrong, it gets fixed on the page and the change is noted, not quietly edited away.

What this site will not do

It will not diagnose you, treat you, or tell you what is wrong with your neck. That requires examining a person, which a website cannot do. If you have pain that is severe, persistent, or comes with numbness, weakness or pins and needles, the correct next step is a clinician, not a new chair.

It also will not recommend a product because somebody paid for the placement. Some links here are affiliate links and are marked as such — see the disclosure page — but what gets recommended is decided before any of that, and products get criticised here as readily as they get praised.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections and disagreements are all welcome at hello@thedeskload.com. Corrections especially — if you can show me a paper I've read wrong, I want to know.