LifeSpan Fitness Blog

Tips on living healthy and fit

10,000 Steps To Better Health And Fitness

Walking is probably about the safest type of exercise you can do. It is low-impact, which means it does not take a lot of wear and tear on your bones and joints. It also has numerous health benefits, which include a 90% reduction of having an initial heart attack (source: AHA), a 70% reduction in the risk of strokes (source: AHA), a 50% reduction in the risk of developing type-2 diabetes (source: ADA), a 30-70% reduction in the rate of cancers (source: ACS).  Also, regular walking has the ability to lower LDL cholesterol, reduce high blood pressure, reduce stress levels and manage a healthy weight.

Walking can also ease you into a higher level of fitness. If you have done just about nothing in the way of exercise, walking is probably the safest and easiest way to start your journey to getting fit.

Most health care professionals are in agreement that it takes walking about 10,000 steps a day to realize these health and fitness benefits. The goal of taking 10,000 steps in a day is a rough equivalent to the Surgeon General’s recommendation to accumulate 30 minutes of activity most days of the week.

Since walking is natural, an exercise routine based on it is easy to begin and can be great fun. In fact, when you go about it the right way, the time you reserve for walking can be the best part of your day. Here are a few tips on how to get your walking routine right.

  • Set weekly walking goals and work towards them one STEP at a time
  • Start out slowly and begin by walking short distances, and then gradually increase it in a systematic way
  • Make the first walk easy, don’t start off with a grueling first walk
  • Think of ways to add more steps to your day: take the stairs whenever you can, walk to work or during breaks at work, or park farther away in parking lots
  • Add one minute or 100 steps each time you go for a walk
  • Walk with good posture, holding your back as straight as possible

Once you start walking regularly, you will begin to notice how taking those steps benefit your overall health. A moderately paced walk, for 10,000 steps, will increase your stamina, your fitness level and burn up extra calories.

Don’t put it off any longer. You will find that walking will be an uplifting and energizing activity for you.  You will be glad you did it.  Sometimes just taking that first step toward the 10,000 steps a day goal is the hardest of all. After step two though, you should be on your way to 10,000 steps and and even more.  Get started today!

 

Health Risks of a Sedentary Lifestyle

Spending too much time at your desk sitting (even if you do get the recommended 30 minutes a day of exercise) leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. This is a bold statement, but the reality is that our bodies simply are not designed to sit for extended periods of time.

Sitting all day while we work, or more commonly called “having a sedentary lifestyle,” has only recently become a trending topic in health and fitness, but studies of the affect of sitting while working vs. standing (and moving) while working date back to the mid-twentieth century. In an article by Maria Masters (Men’s Health) she recounts a British study published in 1953 where scientists examined two groups of workers: bus drivers and trolley conductors. The bus drivers were more likely to sit down for their entire day, the trolley conductors were running up and down the stairs and aisles trolleys. As it turned out, the bus drivers were nearly twice as likely to die of heart disease as the conductors were.

Marc Hamilton, Ph.D. from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center has labeled this area of science “inactivity physiology.” He found that when the leg muscles are not used for a few hours, our levels of the enzyme lipoprotein lipase (LPL) drop off severely. This protein’s main role is to break down fat in the bloodstream to use as energy. He states simply, “humans sit too much… the cure for too much sitting isn’t more exercise. Exercise is good, of course, but the average person could never do enough to counteract the effect of hours and hours of chair time.”

Increased risks of heart disease and obesity are just a couple of the health hazards related to a sedentary lifestyle. Lower back and hip pain, poor balance and mobility are also associated with prolonged periods of sitting. The list of ailments caused by too much sitting goes on to include higher risks of diabetes, depression and even cancer. Christine Friedenreich, an epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services/Cancer Care suggests that her research has found that inactivity is linked to an additional 37,000 cases of cancer. The research that has been done in the last few years on the dangers of sitting is nothing short of alarming. Sitting has become the new smoking.

The good news is that the solution is easy and quite natural — just reduce the amount of time spent sitting. Finding additional time in a hectic work day for more exercise can seem impossible, but with the LifeSpan Treadmill Desk taking the place of an office chair, not only can you eliminate the inactivity in your workday but you will find that you will have an increase in energy as well as productivity.

The TR1200-DT from the “Ground Up”


Treadmills are designed with a drive motor that is connected to the front roller via a belt.The pulley on the drive motor is much smaller than the pulley on the front roller to create a mechanical advantage. In other words this allows the motor to spin multiple times around for every time the front roller spins. This works like the gears of a car. The higher the ratio between the front roller and the motor, the more power the motor can transfer to the treadmill belt and the easier it is for the motor to pull you as a user while you’re walking on the belt.

One of the challenges in designing a quality treadmill is having strong torque at low speeds without then causing the motor to run too fast at high speeds. Most treadmills typically have maximum speeds in the 10 and 12 MPH range. If the gear ratio is too high, this will cause the motor to spin at an rpm that will wear out the motor quickly and this is where the discussion on treadmill quality is often centered. Better quality and larger motors will typically be able to have a high torque at low speeds and then more easily run within its recommended RPM at the maximum speed.

So when we say the TR1200-DT is designed from the ground up to be a treadmill desk, mechanically it means that we focused on optimizing the torque of the motor at low speeds by increasing the pulley ratio between the motor and the front pulley. In return, we reduced the maximum walking speed to 4 MPH.
The result is a treadmill that can easily operate for hours at a time at low speeds without over heating or creating excessive stress on the motor and electronics.

Using Your LifeSpan TR 1200-DT Treadmill Desk

 

 

 

When using your treadmill desk there are several factors one should consider to promote a healthy, safe walking and working environment. Comfort is the key and the tips below will help maintain proper posture while walking and working.

 

  • Wearing comfortable shoes that provide proper support for walking longer durations is a great place to start. Try to avoid open-toe and other styles of shoes that will provide discomfort and fatigue over time.
  • Establishing the ideal desk height with proper ergonomics is critical for comfort, safety and a proper walking posture. Adjust the desk height so that your elbow is level with the keyboard, laptop, phone or mouse. Selecting the proper height adjustment will properly position the wrist during typing, prevent soreness in the elbows and promote the body being in an active and upright walking position. For those looking to mount a display to the treadmill desk, look to position the display at eye level and based on preference 18” – 24” away from your face.
  • When using a phone, it is strongly recommended that a “hands free” solution is implemented. This will keep both hands free to work and provide additional security and safety by freeing up hands to make the necessary console adjustments. The treadmill desk offers ample working surface area, so keep items that are used often within close proximity.

The Story – Why did we design the TR1200-DT?

As a result of our ongoing involvement with the medical fitness community and our partnership with the American College of Sports Medicine we watched the results published by Dr. Levine from the Mayo Clinic with a lot of interest.  In 2005, Dr. Levine an obesity researcher at the Mayo Clinic and several of his colleagues, built treadmill desks to use at work.  They found that walking at a 1.0 MPH pace burned approximately 100 calories per hour without breaking a sweat.

Several years later, online reviewers of LifeSpan treadmills started building treadmill desks and writing reviews about how to construct them.  We decided it was time to do further research. The internet was the first place we looked for more information.  There was an abundance of reviews, blog content, and video that was critical for us to refine the requirements that consumers were looking for in a treadmill desk.  Things like sore elbows from resting on a hard surface all day, convenience of using the console controls, wiring and cable management all came up in reviewer comments.

Then as we tested products on the market we were surprised by the lack of stability of the desktop platforms and the range of adjustment that was needed to support a full range of users – both short and tall.

Finally we set our engineers to design a treadmill desk to address the improvements that had been identified and to do it at an affordable price.

The TR1200-DT is the result.  Based on the TR1200i treadmill platform, the LifeSpan TR1200-DT has a completely independent desktop to avoid any vibration from walking on the treadmill impacting the desk top surface.  The desktop includes sturdy height adjustment with a simple operating console built into the front of the desk without taking away any of the valuable work space.

We think it’s a great product and would love to thank our customers for influencing the design.