Body Mechanics/Positioning

During the past few years employees have suffered shoulder strains, back strains, cuts, contusions, smashed body parts, punctures, pulled muscles, fractures, torn lateral meniscus and rotator cuff sprains.

One of the root causes of these injuries

has been identified as:

Poor Body Positioning.

What is Poor Body Positioning?

Poor Body positioning is the practice physically overexerting yourself in the workplace. By placing parts of your body in awkward positions, overuse of muscles, and repetitive motions to perform your job.

What is meant by – poor body positioning?

Heavy lifting over waist height Exertions from awkward positions Forceful exertions Stretching & lifting Bulky/odd shaped loads Awkward/twisted lifting Awkward/twisted work postures

Identification of Job HazardsPrior to starting any job, a JSA should be completed. During the JSA process, look at all of the steps that you will take to complete the job. Then look for the hazards the we might encounter and then eliminate or take action to remove the hazards.

Identification of Job Hazards

During this hazard identification and elimination process we also need to be looking for tasks that will require us to place ourselves in a poor body position.A simple way to identify poor body positioning is to…

Ask yourself?

Ask yourself ?

Am I properly positioned to lift and move that part from point “A” to Point “B” without overexerting myself?

Ask yourself ?

Am I going to be physically lifting heavy objects above waist height to perform a task?

Ask yourself ?

Am I going to be performing a repetitive motion task to finish the job?

Answer Yourself

If you answered “Yes” to any of the questions, then you are potentially placing yourself at risk by using poor body positioning to perform your job. Use these questions to identify tasks where poor body positioning is a factor. When in doubt “Stop the Job” until you are sure it is safe to proceed.

Work Smarter / Not HarderGranted, there are tasks in the workplace that can create unhealthy stress for your body. The goal of proper body positioning is to identify these dangerous tasks and prevent injuries by changing the way you do your job.

Examples of Poor Body Positioning

General Information:

Take care of your whole body with exercise, proper posture, a sensible diet and adequate rest. If your muscles or ligaments have weakened over time from lack of exercise or age, you are more apt to get a strain or sprain than if you are physically fit.

Summary:

We need to recognize poor body position as a job hazard when doing our pre-job JSA.We need to devise a method to mitigate or eliminate the poor body position you may encounter while performing your job task.Basically, we need to stop and think of how we are going to do our job before we get started.