Walk and Work Treadmills

Designed from the "Ground Up" is a term we use to describe our treadmill desks. To define this term we need to first have a brief discussion on how treadmills work from a mechanical perspective.

Treadmills are designed with a drive motor that is connected to the front roller via a belt. The pulley on the drive motor is 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.

LifeSpan Treadmill Desks Workstations are used differently than traditional exercise treadmills. The average treadmill desk user will walk between 1.2 and 2.0 MPH. As a result, treadmill desks need very high torque at slow speeds and they don't need to reach running speeds at all.

This gives us the opportunity to modify the pulley ratio on our treadmill desks to create more power at low speeds to support hours of walking without overheating or adding stress to the motor and electronics.

This is only possible by reducing the maximum belt speed. The maximum speed on all of our treadmill desks is 4 MPH which you can adjust down to 2 MPH if preferred for safety reasons.

Deck Suspension: A good deck suspension reduces the impact on your knees and other joints as your foot hits the walking belt. LifeSpan treadmills use 3 independent dampeners on each side of the deck to hold the walking deck above the frame and absorb impact when your foot strikes the belt. If you plan on walking 10,000 or more steps a day, which we recommend, a good deck suspension will allow you to walk longer with less fatigue and without causing joint pain or injury. We also recommend using walking shoes with arch support and a soft sole to complement the benefits of the deck suspension.