Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Thanks to a watchful reader, Shawn Lea at Everything and Nothing. She left a comment on my entry about Brad Felt’s Treadputer which pointed me to this website about turning your treadmill into a treadputer.

• Walking While Working: How to Take Your Cubicle from ‘Fattening Pen’ to ‘Fitness Center’ – Squidoo Lens

I’m particularly interested in this modification:

It’s Rob Couture’s Treadputer. It looks so tasteful and simple that I wonder how I would modify my treadmill this way. It looks a little low to really work for typing, though. What keeps the laptop from sliding off?

I think I haven’t modified my treadmill is because I’m scared of damaging my laptop, treadmill or both. I just need to move past the fear and try it for myself.

This is the ultimate computer treadmill that I have ever seen. This is his description of how they built it. I wish I had a “Ross” that I could just depend on to build me prototype exercise machines.

• Feld Thoughts – The Treadputer

He has a keyboard and trackball that he can use (a mouse is useless), but he also uses a voice recognition program, Dragon Naturally Speaking, for some of his word processing.

I doubted that Dragon Naturally Speaking would work while I was running, but it performs almost flawlessly after thirty minutes of training. I’m still finding my way around it – although it does remind me (by not recognizing anything) to slow down my running pace if I’m breathing too hard.

I like to imagine that in the future I’ll be able to just walk into Sear’s Roebuck and buy a treadmill that looks like this, but that is probably wishful thinking.

Via: The Treadputer – The Jason Calacanis Weblog

As you can see, I have wanted a treadmill desk (treadputer, walk station, etc.) for a LONG time. The first time I wrote about it was back in 2006.

• Starling Fitness – A Whole Website About Treadputers!
• Starling Fitness – The Walking Desk Blog
• Starling Fitness – The Walkstation from Steelcase
• Starling Fitness – Treadmill Desk
• Starling Fitness – Fitness Magazine Review: April 2010
• Starling Fitness – The Best Inexpensive Treadmill Desk

EIGHT years later, I FINALLY did it to my treadmill, and I’m so excited! Best of all, it only cost me THREE bucks!!

Read more for instructions, but I’m sure you can see what I did just from this first photo. (more…)

I love the design of this treadmill desk.

• Redetermine: DIY PVC-IKEA Treadmill Desk – Again
• Redetermine: DIY PVC-IKEA Treadmill Desk

He used an Ikea Linnmon Table Top, four Adils legs, and 1.5 inch PVC pipe. Connecting the legs to the table was a bit of a challenge, but he explained how he did it here.

To tighten the connection between the table leg and the PVC make a vertical cut at the end of the pipe and push a coupling down. The coupling will apply pressure and jamb the PVC against the metal leg.

This is the absolute BEST design for an inexpensive treadmill desk. I have been looking at these for a LONG time and this is the first one that makes me want to build it. You can see some of the other treadmill desks here:

• Starling Fitness – A Whole Website About Treadputers!
• Starling Fitness – The Walking Desk Blog
• Starling Fitness – The Walkstation from Steelcase
• Starling Fitness – Treadmill Desk
• Starling Fitness – Fitness Magazine Review: April 2010

It’s obvious that I have been interested in this for a LONG time. The truth of the matter is, I am a literal SLUG during the day. Even walking on a treadmill at ONE mile per hour while I am working would be AMAZING compared to the sloth of my typical work day. I am VERY interested in getting a desk that I can use at my treadmill right now, so this PVC plan is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for.

Via: LINNMON treadmill desk with PVC pipe legs – IKEA Hackers

I’ve talked about treadmill desks before, but here is an awesome video that shows them in action:

There is a blog that talks about treadmill desks here:

• Treadmill Desk Blog

I have some entries about them here:

• Starling Fitness » A Whole Website About Treadputers!

• Starling Fitness » The Walking Desk Blog

• Starling Fitness » The Walkstation from Steelcase

A couple of years ago, I thought that I would encourage myself to be more active by having a standing desk, where I could type at my computer by standing up. The funny thing is, I avoided that desk and started working on my laptop on the couch instead. After months of this, Mike finally said, “Let’s face it, the standing desk is a failure.” He was right and I immediately reorganized my desk space to be more comfortable. Walking all day long might be healthy, but if I have any choice in the matter, I’m pretty sure I’d just avoid doing work at my treadmill desk and take the laptop to the kitchen table if I had to.

Video via: Coming Here Soon :: cowork utah

Treadmill Desk Blog via: The Treadmill Desk Blog

Steelcase is an up-scale furniture design company that has taken the treadputer to heart.

• Steelcase’s Walkstation marries desk and treadmill – Engadget

I can find NOTHING about the Walkstation on Steelcase’s website. They are best known for the Think Chair, which is “the simplest, most streamlined embodiment of our deep understanding of people who sit, and how they sit throughout the day.” If they profess to know people who sit so much, I wonder if they know anything about people who walk and run all day.

It looks like the Walkstation is merely an elevated work table over a sub-grade treadmill. You probably would do better to go to Home Depot, get the supplies and build one yourself. You get to choose your treadmill that way. Rumor has it that a Walkstation is going to cost $6500. Do you think it’s worth that to have a computer at your treadmill?

V is a freelance architect who wanted to have a healthier life. She saw the treadputer ideas and decided to try it on her own. Documenting her journey (and the cost) she has started her own weblog about the process.

She found a used treadmill on Craigslist for $200 and her bulky CRT monitor didn’t work on the shelving, so she has purchased a LCD monitor for only $119. That and a little shelving and she is ready to walk and work.

She has used a monitor splitter so she can work at a desk (work top) if she needs to or work on the treadmill.

V talks about some of the logistics of walking while working:

“The other thing I’ve noticed is, when I get focused on something, I tend to forget to walk. It’s a good thing this machine has one of those thingies that hooks to your clothes and will pull out and turn off the machine if you get too far away from the console.”

I’m interested to see if she is able to draft while walking. Drafting takes a certain precision when using the mouse, so learning to do that while keeping active will be a challenge. If you are considering setting up a treadputer workstation, keep reading her weblog to see how she is able to handle the logistics of working while walking.

Update 08-18-06 12:12 am: Sadly, it looks like V has deleted her weblog.