The apex of the lumbar curve should be at around the height of the 4th lumbar vertebra. Set it too low and you may end up slouching. Set it too high and the “default” curve may prove too deep for your particular physique. You should probably set it somewhere in the middle to ensure proper lumbar support (it’s better to err on the side of more support) while still allowing the backrest to adapt. If you’re more “curvy”, you want your natural shape to be preserved while you’re sitting.Īt the lowest setting, the chair is quite pliable and submissive at the highest, it’s like a Prussian public officer, fiercely resisting any attempts to deviate from the specified Lendenwirbelkurve. If you’re a bit flatter, a chair that forces a deeper curve on you will feel uncomfortable (Gesture, I’m looking at you). It could correspond to a deeper lumbar curve, or a slightly flatter one. A “neutral” alignment of lumbar vertebrae (=one in which the pressure on lumbar intervertebral discs is evenly distributed, see here) means something different for different people. Why is it important? Because people have different lumbar curves and differently shaped intervertebral discs. The degree to which the chair allows your lower back to straighten is adjustable with the “lower back firmness” knob – a superb feature that is only found on the Leap and the Please (strangely, you won’t find it on the newer and more expensive Gesture). (This is called flexing your lumbar spine and is associated with back injuries that I’m guessing you don’t want to experience.) When you flex your lumbar spine on the Leap, the backrest will apply increasing force in that area to help you stay within healthy limits. As you sit more upright, your lower back will “want” to straighten, losing its natural concave shape. This is desirable – an ergonomic chair shouldn’t just adapt to whatever bad posture you have, but also encourage correct posture. Of course, the flexibility is not absolute and the backrest will resist larger deviations from the anatomically correct “S”.
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Everything in between is free to move, which helps the backrest adapt to the shape of your spine. Its backrest is made of flexible plastic which is fixed only in two places – at the bottom and at chest level – to the metal frame behind it. So it should be no surprise that a standard office-chair backrest – which is essentially a rigid plastic board on a hinge with some padding – is not the most ergonomically sound solution. What’s more, even for the same person, spinal curvature differs depending on position. While the human spine is S-shaped, it can be more or less curvy from person to person. In the end, I chose the Leap, but it was truly an agonizing choice and I was on the fence until the last minute. But then I tested the Leap, and I ended up having to choose between two very close contenders. It won my heart, and I was genuinely sorry when I had to take it back to the store. After rejecting an unreasonable number of them, I had the chance to borrow a Steelcase Please for two weeks. So I kept borrowing chairs from high-end dealers, hoping I would find one I liked. Of course, as you know from my review, it quickly turned out the non-adjustable lumbar support was excessive, and the thickly padded seat got much too hot in normal use. So the first chair I took home for a spin was a Gesture. The Gesture was the new and shiny model it seemed to offer better lumbar support and the salesman really talked up the intriguing, almost infinitely adjustable armrests. Still, after an initial in-store test, it did not blow me away. The Leap has certainly stood the test of time, having been in production since 1999 (albeit with some changes). If you were to make a chart of all-time best-selling high-end chairs, the Leap would almost certainly occupy a (distant) second place after Herman Miller’s Aeron, that mainstay of Silicon Valley startups. It is Steelcase’s best-known chair and their biggest sales hit. If you’re looking for a high-quality office chair, and you haven’t heard of the Steelcase Leap, you haven’t done your homework.
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(See more advice on how to buy a good chair.) Don’t use my reviews to decide which chair to buy use them as a starting point for your own testing.
People have wildly varying opinions when it comes to chairs, and you should always test a chair for a few days in your own work environment before buying it.
#Leap office chair 1200 series
This review is part of my series of reviews of ergonomic office chairs.
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