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Treadmill Workstation
coondoggie writes "Did you know you could lose as much as 66 pounds by sweating on your PC? Well using the Mayo Clinic's vertical workstation, that just might be the weight loss wave of the future. The vertical workstation is basically a desk mounted over a treadmill that lets office workers to kill two birds with one stone — send emails, check invoices and write reports and burn calories at the same time, say Professors James Levine and Jennifer Miller of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who came up with the machine/desk. There are other things you can try as well. For example, the FPGamerunner, a USB full-size treadmill that works with any first-person shooter (FPS) game, has you covered. Walking on the treadmill moves your character through the game. Handlebars and buttons at the front of the $1,299 treadmill control your direction and fire your weapons." This seems like a lot better idea than me trying to collect Pokemon on an elliptical trainer which will no doubt one day lead to a very embarrassing obituary.
I lift 4 days a week and do cardio 3 days a week. One of those cardio sessions every week is actually done on a stationary bike while playing video games.
It works fantastically...I find that I will stay on that bike for a MUCH longer time (roughly 30 minutes longer) if I am actively engaged with something other than my legs moving
Living With a Nerd
I work for an Electric company. I suppose they will want to sell the power that is generated.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
I'd like to know whether this USB Treadmill is bus-powered, or if I'll have to deal with the inconvenience of plugging yet another power brick into my surge suppressor...
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
I wonder how many people will get wrapped up in the game, bust their ass and get shot across the room after they've been "PWNED".
"Well doctor, someone was spawn raping us and the next thing I know, I was trying to pry my head from under the sofa. I was pwned."
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I'd love to see them walk on a treadmill and try to send email at the same time.
Granted, IT would get called to fix the treadmill if it broke.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Workout machines make noise, which would add to the normal office noise levels.
Some of us need a reasonable level of quiet to be able to concentrate and work effectively.
I dunno how effective it would be for me. I have to get up to a pretty decent run to get my heart rate to a point where its any real benefit, and I doubt I could type well at a run. As for FPS, most of them already reduce your accuracy when your toon is moving; compound that with the physical movement of your body and you probably won't be hitting much; this problem could be mitigated by just having pixel perfect aim in the game and letting the actual movement be the cause of inaccuracy, but I can see that being abused...
Imagine moving that treadmill controller around to LAN parties. Only the most dedicated to weight-loss would attempt it, but man would it be hilarious to see the 300 pound guy sweating his ass off getting that thing through the door.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I find it is hard for me to keep my eyes focused when I watch TV while using a treadmill. I'd think it would be even more difficult to try to focus on text on a monitor and use a keyboard/mouse too. There is the issue of sweat getting on the keyboard and mouse. A stationary bike might work though.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
According to xe.com, you lose 655 pounds straight away !!
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
I seriously doubt this with sell well. Not only is it expensive, but if you've ever tried to do anything on a laptop while moving from one room to another you know that the human body doesn't stabilize itself between bottom and top. If the bottom is moving, the top is too, and trying to do things that require some degree of non-movement, like typing for instance, would be difficult. Additionally, who's going to use this desk? Does it get moved around the office all day to whoever wants a go? Do you expect someone to use it all day? Even the most fit people aren't going to be interested in standing up all day for a desk job. As it goes, it's just impractical. They've got the right box, but they're thinking too far outside it. Personally, I would encourage activity at the office through things like frisbee during a break.
Geeks arguing about exercise. Yeah - this oughta be good.
I posted the above as kind of a joke, but I became curious and visited the official Gamerunner website.
Apparently the treadmill actually will sell for $495 plus S&H, once they get their store going.
And from looking at the actual manual for the thing (warning: PDF!) it looks like it uses two USB connectors (one for keyboard, one for mouse) and the display panel is powered by two AA batteries. You'd think there would be enough bus power in two connectors to power a low-end LCD display.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
Some more info.....
BBC covered this in detail, one of their reporters tried it out. She was less then enthusiastic about office work whilst using the thing "Shame my hands can't keep up, it took me almost five minutes to key in the above without a single mistake." (from the linked article below).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6656631.stm?ls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6657305.stm
But I'm not a good enough geek to put it together. *sigh* You start off with one of the recumbant exercise bikes, the ones where you're sitting in a seat with the pedals out in front of you. The flatscreen monitor swings down to be right in your face. You replace the regular handgrips with joysticks with enough buttons to run the game.
:) Ok, maybe you might compromise and go with some hybrid type that mixes FPS and a vehicle like Descent. The peddling rate won't determine your max speed but max reactor output. You get to balance your power between speed, laser bank, and shield charge.
So, what's the game? Has to be a racing game.
The kind of game I have in mind is like Twisted Metal, cars going fast. Some parts would have proper racetracks to run around on, other parts would be like city streets. The goal is to blow up the other exercisers you're playing against in the gym.
If the combat angle isn't as fun, then you can just settle for a more conventional racing game where the pedaling rate directly translates to your in-game speed. I'd love to see a pedal-power flight sim with the kind of graphics we can push these days. That'll get people in the gym!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
In real money, that's 30kg. Or four stone ten.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I already walk around while playing my DS, and get up from the computer at least every half hour. I've setting up my office to allow me to work while standing for a while now, but I get stuck on monitor configuration. How to switch from standing to sitting quickly without interrupting the work flow (still stumped there)?
Alternate ergonomics are unfamiliar, but not impossible. The thing is, we aren't made for sitting in front of a computer all day long, but we could fool our bodies into feeling we aren't. Treadmills, changing postures, etc.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
Do the math. Brisk walking burns 7 calories a minute. A McDonalds value meal has 1170 calories. You have to walk briskly for 167.14 minutes to burn off those calories. That's 2 hours 47 minutes. Of walking. Briskly.
Exercise has important health benefits and you should be doing it. But to lose weight, you need
to control your food intake. All the fad diets and pills are bullshit and possibly harmful as well. Eat less calories, and you will lose weight. And while you are at it, cut out all the hydrogenated fats. Eating lard would be less harmful. If you are addicted to nicotine, get your fix thru a method other than smoking or chewing.
Yes I am ranting. But I hate to see people oblivious to the fact that they are
ruining their health and quality of life by ingesting obscenely excessive amounts of harmful "food" products and nicotine delivery systems. Know why all the old people you see on the street are thin like birds? Because most of the fat people died when they were 50 years old, and the rest of them are confined in a nursing home waiting to die.
Odd, I heard about this on NPR this morning. But before this report was a longish report about how the "business community" of France was annoyed that they weren't getting the profits they could get if the workers weren't restricted to 35 hours of non-OT work by law. Report also mentioned that by law, all workers had to get physical checkups in order to work. The report, trying to be "balanced", mentioned that actually French workers were more productive than Americans, per hour worked.
Then the report about the hamster wheel desk. No irony intended, I'm sure.
Thing about the workers with the shorter work week in France that they didn't mention? They aren't really all that overweight. Thin, actually. American workers are not. I'd have to come down on the side that would say that we're fat because all we f*ing do is work. I do fifty a week at a forty job, and get warned about even three hours of OT. Thanks jeebus I ride a bike to work during the summer, or I'd have a bypass operation by now. I'm too tired to exercise -- it't no fun when you get home at eight and all you want to do is drop into a chair, not from physical, but mental exhaustion. And no, the other jobs aren't better, all the coming anecdotes from star IT workers to the contrary.
Employer solution? Well, force me out and replace me with H1B labor, sure, or make two people do my job, which already is a composite of two people's jobs. But maybe, a Habitrail! That's the solution!
Or we can reregulate our work world and have a 35 hour week, or in reality a 40. Nah. That's communism.
But we are fat, dying too young of old men's diseases, overcharged by a factor of two for medical care for a crap lifestyle, have no free time, and are less productive and by survey a hell of a lot less happy than the French. And the French companies are by no means impoverished; they just want more profits. So they want to be more like us, eh? Alors, time to get the French Habitrail desk. I hope it has a nice winerack for lunch, at least. Another thing they can do is drink at lunch...
I saw the guy who is organizing the research on this (NEAT), who gave a 90 minute talk at my institution last year (we study the genetics of diabetes.) I figured this might be an interesting place to share my notes. The notes are slightly raw, but might be of interest (and there's nothing that's under NDA in them.)
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Non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
Uses 2x-3x the calories of exercise.
Varies by up to 2000 calories between individuals
Note: most people of the world don't exercise
Neat explains why an active person can burn 2000 calories more than an inactive person of the same size.
Occupational NEAT:
chair bound:300
seated work: 700
standing: 1000
active: 1400
agricultural: 2300
Women work a heck of a lot more than men. (peak 500 minutes/day women vs. 320/day men)
A test that overfed people by 1000 calories a day:
Some people didn't gain weight, they just increased their NEAT.
Some central mechanisms may be regulating NEAT.
There are chemical ways to induce neat (Central Orexin)
Spontaneous physical activity may not be spontaneous!
People who fail to increase NEAT: maybe they have a NEAT defect?
They built sensors integrated into clothing to see what body postures were like.
Looks like lean people stand up more, and obese subjects sit a lot more.
Overfeed underweight people, underfeed overweight people ->
Starting obese people still sit more, Starting lean people tend to stand more.
Perhaps fat people just have 'poor NEAT adaptation'
Think about this: there's no inherent reason why we ought to be sitting all the time.
Are there ways to get us all out of our chairs?
1) Persuade them to stand (behavior modification)
2) Get rid of the chair (environmental change)
------1------
STRIPES
Targeted goals help people change behavior.
Select->Target goals->Reward->identify bariers->Plan->Evaluate->Sustain->Target Goals
Lady starts at 3 5 second walks a day.
She's working up to 5 5 minute walks over time.
Barrier: if you decide to walk your dog in the rain,the rain is the barrier. If you're massivly fat, tying shoes might be the barrier.
Planning is representative of prioritization.
------2-------
The way you change the environment - do a walk and talk meeting program (at least you get something out of it!) "Walk and talk tag - you are not to be interrupted"
Make this competitive so that the more times you have meetings that are walk and talk, the more you are 'winning'. Yet, the number of meetings will decline.
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They now have a small unit that can measure your posture, etc and measures NEAT every 10 seconds.
Allows complex phenotyping of people moving, etc.
Ipod earpiece that detects activity level of the user - for each mile they walk, they get a free download. Kids get into the competition to get free downloads.
Imagine computers that are on treadmills (or exercise bikes), so you can stand and walk all day instead of sitting, People pick 1 mile an hour to work out, and burn 100 calories an hour.
If you design a school so kids can stand, they will move around a lot.
Now, there are Soda machines that say "Thirsty" - this is a cue to your brain to make you think about it, then purchase -also snack machines that say "hungry"
I guess you don't know much about genetics, do ya? :-)
It's a simple formula: calories in - calories burned = fat stored.
If calories in - calories burned = fat stored * magic_genetics_modifier then you've invented energy creation from nothing or destruction without release.
In either case, the genetics excuse for obesity is incompatible with the conservation of energy. The genetics track really means some people have faster metabolisms and burn the calories or don't have as efficient a gastro system to extract calories from food. Other people have slower metabolisms or more efficient gastro systems to get every bit out. People in the latter group need to eat a lot less and/or find a way to burn off more (exercise). Convincing people of formula #2 above is just more helpless victim mentality.
Let's see, you have an elliptical machine and a bicycle, but don't have enough time to use them; however, you also have a Nintendo Wii, which you do seem to have time for, and you're considering a machine that works in conjuction with video games.
Sounds like video games are a higher priority than health for you. 30-60 minutes a day on the elliptical or bike a few times a week would be a good start. The weight won't disappear overnight, but over time, it will have some positive benefits.
to control your food intake. All the fad diets and pills are bullshit and possibly harmful as well. OK. 2 things...
1: Don't worry about your weight, it isn't what matters. What matters is your size. Muscle is five times more dense than fat. You exercise, you physically shrink though you may well stay the same weight or even put some on.
i.e.
Use a tape measure, not scales.
2: When you exercise, the muscle you build requires energy to run it 24/7 day. You may only expend 200 calories during the exercise itself, but if it makes your body consume 5% more calories while resting you are going to lose weight automatically if your intake remains constant.
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I'm cucreantly oon a traedmill worksttatioan and I mu8tgst say that6y I lovwe it. It makeeks lossigsn weight so easty. Ittsw a littlwe buumpy but I dootn' think anyoeonq2 nottices.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
I'm seeing a lot of BS flying around about the idea of a walking desk, and having built my own, I thought I should de-FUD the conversation a bit.
.7 mph, which is crazy slow. Slow enough, in fact, that its almost hard to walk at that speed. The point is to just move and burn a steady trickle of calories over a long period of time, not "work out". If you're sweating or even breathing hard at all, you're doing it wrong. I can talk on the phone and the other party has no idea that I'm on a treadmill. I personally vary my speed between 1.2 and 2.0 mph. Basically, the speed is inversely proportional to the amount of concentration required by the current task. If I'm just reading, I can do 2.0 with no problem. If I'm writing code or doing any real amount of typing, I'll usually keep it around 1.4 - 1.6.
9 ve8.jpg 0 jr6.jpg l r5.jpg 2 rk7.jpg 4 wt9.jpg
You're not running, or even walking quickly. James Levine, the guy spearheading all this NEAT stuff, recommends
Which brings me to an important point: typing speed is nearly unaffected. My error rate is probably a little higher when on the treadmill, but not enough to be an issue at all. I can still out-type nearly everyone on IM, so if the walking slows me down at all, it's a moot point anyway.
It took me a couple days to really adapt to it, but once you're used to walking and working simultaneously, it's pretty mindless. Your legs basically go on autopilot while your mind does what it needs to do. I would compare it to [car analogy alert!] driving a manual transmission in heavy city traffic. It sucks at first, but eventually it's all muscle memory and you don't have to think about it at all. You just do it.
Here are some (old, crappy) pics of the treadmill set up in my old office:
http://img476.imageshack.us/img476/7197/091806120
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/9194/091806121
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/898/0918061211
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8043/091806121
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6964/091806121
It looks somewhat assy, but it works really, really well. The keyboard/mouse platform is ultra-stable and does not move at all or even vibrate at the speeds I walk. With the monitors positioned the way they are, my eyes never have trouble following even small text, and I'm older with very bad vision. If anyone is considering doing this, don't even bother with a treadmill that retails for less than about $1500. You need a high quality treadmill to achieve the necessary silence and stability for office use.
Actually, no, I don't have much time for the Wii, either. I've played it maybe 5 hours in the last month.
But you act like entertainment is not a necessary part of life. Like you can just give up on having fun and just exercise and work, and that'll be fine. Some of us need a little de-stressing time from work, and exercise doesn't do that for me, no matter what it does for other people. Everyone's always saying how the endorphins will make you feel better, etc, etc. Doesn't work for me. I'm just as stressed afterwards as before. I need a good book or video game to de-stress. While it's marginally possible to watch TV while on exercise equipment, it's nearly impossible for gaming or reading.
So don't be so quick to lump the entire human race together as if we're all identical. We each have different needs.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM