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Good morning and welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe. My name is Joe King and I am a Physical Therapist and owner of Physical Therapy Advantage in North Aurora, here to bring you a couple of tips. Just recently went on a road trip back to Lincoln, Nebraska to visit my youngest daughter in college. And just thought about road trip tips and pointers that we could point out or help out with people that your seat; either passenger seat, driver's seat, even the back seat, whatever, may not be the most comfortable seat in the world for you, and you may feel unsupportive or feel like you're collapsing in on different things. So I just want to give you two pointers that you may be able to do to help remedy that and make it a little more comfortable for you.

So first one is, as some seats may have a little bit of a swell to it, a little bit of a divot in there, and sometimes you need to take that up otherwise, it's pushing you inward. Same thing for the back part of it too, they'll be pushing you forward. But as far as the seat goes, what you can do to fill in that little cavity, that swell is you can take some towels. I put two of them here to take up the space in mind just to show it. It can be one towel, two towels, whatever it may be, and you can put it in, fill up that hole a little bit. So now you're sitting more level instead of sitting into a little bit of a hole or swell or cavity area, that can definitely help and make you feel more comfortable. The other tip that you can do is take a towel roll; this is a hand towel, fold it in half, of a long way and then roll it up and use the rubber band. You can use pony holders, whatever you want to do.

And then now when you're sitting, you can put it up against the back of the seat. And I'm going to show you here in just a second. You can go vertically, up and down here, or you can go horizontally across your back and you can pick whatever spot you want to, depending on how your seat back is. Obviously, we don't want your seat back probably too straight up and down, but we don't also want it too far recline. So you got to find that happy medium of how far back you feel comfortable, how far away you feel comfortable from the steering wheel, as well as how much support you want. Is this too thick, too thin? And do you want it up and down? Do you want it horizontal? And where in the back, do you want it more in your mid-back? Do you want more in your lower back? It's a trial-and-error process, which is okay, but the nice thing about it is, it's not permanent. If you don't like it, you can always throw it out, just don't throw it out the window. So as you get in, and sit, and then you can figure out, you want that maybe a little higher up to give you support, or do you want it down a little bit lower? Or do I want it to go vertical along your spine as well? Like I said, you're looking at seat height or not seat height, but how far your seat back, how vertical it is. Seat height may be up and down too. You may have to change that if you can in your car, your truck, your SUV; whatever you drive. And also maybe a little bit of that, how forward and back you are.

Hopefully those tips give you a little bit of something to think about. Maybe help you out in those long road trips, even for the short commute or not short commute, but for your daily commute if you happen to travel anywhere from 30 to 45 or maybe 60 minutes for your daily commute to and from work. If you have any questions about this or any other posture tips or maybe stuff about your car seating positions, looking at your ergonomics of that, we'd be more than happy to help. Just give us a call at (630) 892-8003 and we will see you next week for your Weekly Cup of Joe! Bye.