The Impact of Body Posture on Heart Rate Strain during Tree Felling

Tree felling is recognized as one of the most difficult and physically demanding work phases in motor-manual wood harvesting, during which maintaining good posture can avert unnecessary loadings to the spine and the consequent musculoskeletal disorders to forestry professionals. This study aimed to (a) quantify the impact of posture selection by means of heart rate measurements and (b) analyze its interactions with the anthropometric and personal information of study subjects. Thirteen forest workers were asked to fell thirty trees in each of the four most common body postures during motor-manual forest operations: (i) stooping, (ii) flexed stooping, (iii) squatting, and (iv) half kneeling. Posture had a significant impact on the amount of heart strain measured as mean heart rate during work (HRwork), heart rate increase over resting heart rate (Delta HR), and relative heart rate index (HRR). The most popular position among the forest workers was flexed stooping, which also caused the most damage, compared with the least physiologically damaging position, half kneeling: HRwork by 12.40 bpm, Delta HR by 10.24 bpm, and HRR by 11.51. On the contrary, overweight and older subjects experienced lower heart rate strain, a finding that has to be further investigated.