How A Manual Treadmill Can Teach You To Run, And How To Use One Properly (Even At A Desk).

Jeff Vernon (0:01)

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, motorist treadmills go back at least a couple hundred years, back from a patent filing, and you think that, you know, this is how people used to mill their corn or churn their butter in their kitchen.

As you found, it's, you know, really appropriate for walking, controlling your pace, for jogging, slowing down to a walk, sprinting, slowing down to a walk, you know, you don't need to jump off, you just use your body position to control your speed. If you stand straight up and you lean from your ankles, you fall forward. So that's a more efficient position to be in because you're having the benefit of a forward fall.

SPEAKER_2 (0:36)

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness.

His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Ben Greenfield (0:59)

Whatever it is for you that's the natural movement. Get out there when you look at all the studies done.

Studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

SPEAKER_2 (1:11)

All the information you need in one place. Right here. Right now.

On the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Ben Greenfield (1:33)

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And last year, I actually posted an article on the bengreenfieldfitness.com site entitled, How to Turn Your Desk into a Calorie Decimating Workstation.

And in that article, I highlighted basically how I designed my office. So I had this empty office and wanted to just outfit it with the exact setup that would allow me to be productive during the day, still burn calories, still build endurance, and also, and this is really important to me and something that kind of flies under the radar, but also not have a lot of like electrical pollution and damaging what are called electromagnetic fields or EMF or dirty electricity.

So I built basically a treadmill workstation in my office. I used something called a rebel desk, which is like a hand crank up and down desk.

And then I used this treadmill called a true form treadmill. It's a manual treadmill. And I'll put a picture of it if you want to see what it looks like in the show notes for this episode over at Ben Greenfield fitness.com/trueform. That's Ben Greenfield fitness.com/tru E form. And it's kind of it's kind of curved, kind of funky looking. And in today's podcast, we're going to talk about that and why. But it also it doesn't have like electronics on it. It doesn't have a motor. So there's no EMF produced.

And the other very interesting thing is it actually teaches you how to move properly, teaches you how to have proper biomechanics when you're running on it, walking on it, et cetera. So we're going to kind of geek out on manual treadmills today and treadmill workstations and everything that you need to know if you want to get something like this set up in your office, because I use it during the day while I'm working. And then I also use it in the evening when I'm doing sprint workouts. And I'll pepper it in with with my weight training routine. And so I get quite a bit of use out of this thing. So my guest today is Jeff Vernon. Jeff is who I got this treadmill from. He owns a company called Samsara Fitness.

And I'll link over to them again in the show notes for this episode.

And Jeff has been involved in the fitness industry for a while. I'm going to let him tell you his story. But Jeff, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Jeff Vernon (3:48)

Oh, you bet. Great to great to be here with you. Thanks for having me.

Ben Greenfield (3:52)

So how'd you how'd you get to become a treadmill geek?

Jeff Vernon (3:56)

Yeah, so I didn't expect to end up here, an unlikely spot for me. But like you said, I've always been interested in fitness, you know, played sports when I was younger through college, and then sort of returned to fitness at one point when I got frustrated with with my health.

But you tend to be, you know, on the bigger side and things that come naturally to me and that I enjoy doing as more sort of strongman powerlifting activity than running. But I always thought that running as an athlete is important to be able to do, you know, a 5K, you know, a trail run, you know, something, right? You have to be able to do this. If you're going to be an athlete, you can't just be, you know, as I was, you know, 270 pounds and, you know, a large frame, 6'4.