The right working height for your treatment table

The right working height is the one at which you work with a straight back and without raised shoulders. Because it varies depending on technique, body height and patient, what matters when buying a table is less a single number than the adjustable range: it must cover both your lowest and your highest working position.

Why the working height decides on your back

Anyone who works bent over or with raised shoulders across an entire treatment day places lasting strain on the lumbar spine, neck and shoulder girdle, and this effect adds up across many patients and many years in the profession. As a rough orientation, ergonomics often suggests the following: for techniques that involve noticeable body effort, such as mobilising or manipulative grips, many practitioners work below their own elbow height, because from there pressure can be built up through body weight rather than arm muscles. For fine, controlled grip techniques on the head, neck or limbs, the comfortable height tends to be above that, so wrists and shoulders stay relaxed and fine motor control does not suffer under tension. These rules of thumb are a general ergonomic orientation, not a treatment recommendation: the height that actually suits you depends on your body height, your technique and the individual patient, and can only be determined reliably at your own table in your own daily work. Your own build shifts these values too: someone with shorter arms or who treats mainly seated needs an overall lower working height than someone who works exclusively standing with an outstretched arm. The suitable height also changes within a single treatment day as you switch between techniques, which is why rigid rules rarely hold up for long in practice and your own experience ultimately proves more reliable than any rule of thumb.

For this reason, what matters at the point of purchase is less a single target height than the table's entire adjustment range. The lower limit determines how low you can go for forceful techniques and how easily patients with reduced mobility can get onto and off the table, because a low entry height significantly eases sitting down and standing up. The upper limit decides whether fine techniques and taller practitioners can maintain an upright posture without stretching. An adjustment range that covers both ends is therefore the real purchasing criterion, not a particular middle value. In daily practice, though, this range only becomes usable through the drive: an electric height adjustment via hand or foot control brings the table to the desired position in seconds without any effort, even several times a day and with the patient on the table, while a hydraulic table with a foot pump reaches the same span of heights but requires pumping movements for every adjustment. How the two drive types differ in daily use is covered in our guide on electric and hydraulic treatment tables. How often you adjust the height also matters for the choice of drive: if you switch several times per treatment between a low and a high position, the comfort of an electric drive becomes noticeably more apparent over the course of the day than on a table that mostly stays at one fixed height.

Height ranges of our models

So you do not have to piece the height ranges together from individual product pages, the table below lists all our models with the manufacturer's specification of the respective adjustment range, from the lowest to the highest reachable position. The figures come live from our product database and are sorted by minimum height, so models with a particularly low entry position appear at the top. Because the figures update automatically together with our range, we deliberately avoid numbers in the text at this point.

How to find your range

• Measure your preferred working height on your current table in the lowest and highest position you actually use.
• Plan the entry height for your patient group, especially for older or mobility-impaired patients.
• If several people work at the table, the range must cover all their body heights, not the average.

If you are unsure which height range suits the way you work, your team and your patient group, we will advise you without obligation based on your specific situation. In the configurator you can see the full adjustment range and the available drives for each model and tailor the table directly to your requirements before submitting an enquiry. Take your time with this decision, because unlike accessories or colour, the adjustment range cannot be extended afterwards. Where relevant, involve colleagues who regularly work at the same table, so the chosen range genuinely suits the whole team and not just one person.