How to Improve your Sitting Tolerance for your Next Flight
No one enjoys sitting in a metal tube for an 8+ hour flight. The more aches and pains we accumulate likely make sustained sitting more challenging. In addition, less padding in our posteriors leaves less padding to sit on for numerous hours. In this post, I share some tips and tricks I share with my patients. I hope they help improve your sitting tolerance for your next flight.
What You Can Do
Seated Posture
For a long time, health care providers, myself included, stated we all should strive to maintain perfect posture all the time. As we learn more and gain more research, we are seeing that is not entirely true. Our spine is mobile and resilient and we should be able to sit/stand/lay in different positions rather than avoiding movement. If you would like to learn more about these ideas, check out this pdf article from the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy.
What I now have patients aim for is net neutral. We all spend time slouching so try to spend some time in extension. If you find yourself always leaning to the right when driving or on the computer, spend time leaning to the left. Apply this same idea with sitting in an airplane seat. If you have access to both arm rests, spend some time leaning on one, the other, and both. If you are slouching forward, try to spend some time sitting up tall with your head against the headrest.
Headrest
If the headrest is adjustable, spend time making it work for you. Newer seats offer more ways to adjust the headrest like up/down, tilting, folding the right or left side, etc. Other options include rolling up a piece of clothing or towel and placing it behind your head or in the in the space between your head and shoulders. Most of us tend to rest in a forward head position where your head is forward relative to your trunk. For long flights, this can cause musculoskeletal pain and stiffness. Whenever you think of it, try to bring your head back to rest against the headrest.
Exercises
Performing exercises in your seat can also help you keep circulation going and prevent muscle and joint stiffness. See our Seated Exercises to do on an Airplane post to learn 5 muscle activations and 5 stretches. Ankle pumps are usually always a good idea. Pending on how often the fasten seat belt sign is off, try to get up every couple of hours. Walk up and down the aisles, stand up in your aisle, especially when you are waiting for a seatmate to return from the bathroom. All of this can help make the flight more comfortable and help you to feel less stiff at the end of your flight.
What You Can Buy
This next section involves items to buy that may make the airplane seat more comfortable for you. Airplane seats are more of a “one size fits none” unfortunately. Here are some items you may want to try to improve your sitting tolerance for your next flight.
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Seat Cushions
As you are likely well aware, airplane seats vary in comfort and amount of cushion. On one recent flight, I could feel the metal bar under what was left of the padding for the entire flight. In a pinch, you can fold your jacket or provided blanket underneath you. If you want to plan ahead of time, there are several different options for cushions.
The most travel friendly will be inflatable cushions or camping cushions. You will be able to quickly inflate them and give you a sort of egg crate support as in the first picture below. If you need something more substantial, you may want to bring a foam cushion with you but this will likely count as a carryon item unless you can fit it in your bag. If you do go for a substantial cushion, make sure your feet will still reach the floor.
Lumbar Support
There are many different types of lumbar support cushions and rolls out there. Taller people may want a smaller lumbar support while shorter people will likely want a larger support. Especially if you have short legs and have difficulty getting your feet flat on the floor, placing a lumbar support behind you to scoot you forward can give you a significant upgrade in your experience.
Foot Support
Foot support can help in different ways while on a flight. If you have shorter legs like myself, being able to rest your feet on something can be a nice break for when your heels don’t touch the ground. You can use the pillow or blanket provided on the airplane. You can rest your feet on the top of your carryon luggage under your seat. The other option that I have seen more recently is a foot hammock. There is some discussion about whether these are allowed on flights or not. If the foot rests that attach from the tray table, they are not allowed by the FAA as no tension can be added to the tray table. There are many reviews of people using them successfully on flights however. I will let you decide. Here are a couple options:
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