My treadmill desk
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As I mentioned last time, my husband made me a desk for my treadmill.
It was a bit tricky because, as you can see below, the railings are not horizontal to the floor, they slope downward:
Here’s the treadmill with the desk on it, shown from the front:
Here’s from a side angle:
Here’s a close up of how it fits on the railing. Notice the foam he used to make it sit flat on the railing:
Here’s two pictures of the underside, taken while not on the treadmill (obviously):
Here’s the side so you can see how it is angled:
Please feel free to use this design on your own treadmill! If you have questions about how to make it, let me know and I can ask my husband. If your treadmill is the same type as ours, what I have should work exactly as it is on yours:
Since I usually use mine to read on, I need what I’m reading to be raised a bit or I have problems with my neck and back of head from from looking down the whole time. My husband made the additional stand to add height originally for another purpose. And then I use a cookbook stand I bought from Barnes and Noble for my book or magazine:
The additional stand does block the treadmill controls a bit, but not my that much. I just have to reach around or under to change the settings. But I really don’t do that much anyway, since I usually just keep it at 1.5 the whole time.
For more information about treadmill desks, here are some posts and sites where I first learned about the idea:
Liz from Healthbolt: Is it a Computer? Is it a Treadmill?
Brandie at The Home Office Organizer: Standing Desks: A Smart, Healthy Option
Ning social network: Office Walkers
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Related Posts:
- Time to revisit the working and walking thing
- New Year, New Starts!
- Overcoming Underearning: Book Review
February 12, 2009
New Year, New Starts!
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And yes, I realize we’ve been in the new year for quite a while.
And even though New Year’s resolutions aren’t alway a great idea because they can set people up for failure with too high of expectations – still, I find that the holidays often give me a break from everyday life to reevaluate where I am and where I want to be.
Health, being the most important thing, is a good thing to make steps to improve on when you do that evaluation.
Last year I tried to get involved with that WOMAN challenge thing but the pedometer I had missed most of my steps and made it just too frustrating to try to continue with it.
Over the holidays I bought myself a much better pedometer, an Omron, from Amazon:
I tested it and while it does lose small number of steps, it really doesn’t lose a significant number of them.
I decided to try to get to that magic number of 10,000 steps a day! What I found was finding the time to get that many steps in is the hardest part for me.
A few days a week I walk on our treadmill when I exercise, which gets me over half way there, along with regular day to day walking.
However, to get the rest of the steps in I realized I would need to use the treadmill more (at least in the winter). But how to find the time?
A while back I got interested in the idea of working while walking on a treadmill, but wasn’t sure how to set something like that up. The commercial treadmill desks are pretty expensive.
Well, I finally got my husband to make me something to fit over my treadmill so I could at least read while walking!
Next week, I’ll post pictures of how it was made so if anyone wants something similar, you can see how to do it!
Meanwhile, I’ve been doing pretty good with my steps. I noticed the pedometer that I have won’t register steps on the treadmill unless I’m walking at least at 1.5 – which is a little bit faster than some people recommend for working on a treadmill.
To get to 10,000 steps I need to just walk about another 45 or so minutes at 1.5, which I can do most days. I usually do it while I catch up on my reading.
These are my numbers for the past week:
- date steps
- 2/3/09 9600
- 2/4/09 8150
- 2/5/09 10356
- 2/6/09 10182
- 2/7/09 10259
- 2/8/09 5597
- 2/9/09 9851
The really low day was Sunday – I find it difficult sometimes to get up to 10,000 on weekend days. I need a day or two to rest!
I hope to eventually get 10,000 steps at least 5-6 days a week.
So do any of you use a pedometer? Is anyone else trying to get to 10,000 steps a day? Any tips to share for how to do it?
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Related Posts:
- The importance of strength training exercise for women’s health
- Exercise for your heart with WOMAN Challenge
- National Women’s Health Week and WOMAN Challenge
August 19, 2008
Review: High Heels to Hormones: A Woman’s Guide to Spine Care
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I recently won a book about women’s back health from Healthbolt! I was really happy to win a copy of it because for the past couple of years I’ve started to have some back problems and would like to learn more about it.
The book is titled “High Heels to Hormones: A Woman’s Guide to Spine Care” and was written by Christina Lasich.
The book was divided up into roughly 5 sections – an introduction, the cervical spine, thoracic spine, lumbar spine and a concluding section.
In the introductory section of the book she made the point that many women did not learn how to lift, bend, twist or reach properly when younger and are therefore more “susceptible to spine pain because they entered the work force without any type of physical conditioning”.
I’d have to admit that I’m in that group – we never learned anything in school about exercising or in general, moving properly.
Additionally, she discussed the importance of eating healthy and avoiding smoking – both of which influence all aspects of health.
Concerning cervical spine health, she discussed issues of breasts and bras and gave some tips to making sure your bra fits and supports you properly. I stopped wearing bras years ago – and am damn happy I did! I’m small enough that I don’t really need one anyway and always hated wearing them.
She also explained the importance of proper posture in the part about the thoracic spine as well as osteoporosis prevention.
As far as I’ve been able to tell my back problems are all due to posture issues. At one point I started having problems with one of my arms getting numb which seems to be from having my shoulders rounded forward too much. Then I had problems with the back of my head and neck getting numb. That was solved by making sure my monitor was high enough. You should be looking straight forward when looking at your computer for long periods of time (like I have been). My laptop monitor was too low so my head was constantly bent down. Raising it made a huge difference! Lately I’ve had problems lower down on my back, I think because I still haven’t been sitting properly most of the time and need to start doing back and other strength training exercises again. Anyway – enough of me!
Lower back pain is very common and Christina goes over a number of exercises and other things you can do to help prevent it. She mentions also how high heels can cause back pain – a topic that I plan to discuss on my blog in a lot more detail in the future.
Over all I’d say its a good book and I recommend it especially if you are a busy person without a lot of time to read. The book is pretty short and straight to the point with tips and exercises to teach you how to keep your spine healthier.
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- Exercise for your heart with WOMAN Challenge
- Overcoming Underearning: Book Review Part 9
July 30, 2008
3 Exercises Every Woman Should Do
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Staying healthy is so important if we want to be able to be good parents, progress in our careers or make any sort of difference in the world.
And it becomes even more important the older we get. Research has shown that people who live longer tend to be more active throughout their lives.
There are 3 general types of exercise that everyone should do regularly:
1) Cardiovascular Exercise – this type of exercise is also sometimes called aerobic exercise – and is a necessity to keep your heart healthy and strong.
Some easy ways to get this type of exercise are walking and running – activities that involve getting your large muscles moving more and your heart working harder. Personally, I like using a treadmill for this. I usually tape most shows on TV that I like and then watch them while walking on the treadmill. This way I’m not wasting time just watching TV and as I really don’t enjoy exercising, it distracts me from it enough that the time goes by faster.
By the way, cardiovascular exercise helps by strengthening your heart so that it contracts more strongly and can pump more blood with each heart beat. This way your heart doesn’t have to beat as many times per minute.
2) Strength Training – this type of exercise is important to help us build and maintain our strength, especially as we get older because muscle mass is lost as we age. It can also help keep our bones strong and reduce our chances of developing osteoporosis.
To do this type of exercise you can go to a gym, if you enjoy doing that. They will have many different types of equipment there for you to use. I don’t, so I exercise at home using free weights or exercise bands and tubes.
It works by making tiny, microscopic tears in your muscle fibers – which is why you feel sore sometimes after exercising. When these tears heal, they make your muscle stronger and bigger. (These tears shouldn’t be confused with big tears, which are injuries.)
3) Flexibility Exercise – and stretching helps to keep your muscles from getting injured and can increase your range of motion.
There are many different stretching exercises you can do – if you do a search on a search engine you will find many to choose from.
I’ve been wanting to learn tai chi for years but haven’t found anyone near by enough to teach it. It is good for flexibility and for developing better balance.
Honestly, I don’t enjoy exercising!
So do I do what I say everyone else should do? Not really. I don’t really like exercising very much. Some people seem to really enjoy it but I don’t. Overall my motivation to do it comes from wanting to be more healthy and to live longer. Sometimes that is not enough to get me to do it though. I do use our treadmill a few times a week, it’s easier for me to get myself to do it since like I said above – I can watch TV while I’m doing it! So I’m ok with cardiovascular exercise, but the rest I haven’t done for a while.
Do you enjoy exercising? Why or why not? How do you keep yourself motivated? Any tips to make it more enjoyable for people like me?
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Related Posts:
- Exercise for your heart with WOMAN Challenge
- The importance of strength training exercise for women’s health
- Want to be more fit this year?