Perks of Working at an Inbound Marketing Agency: Treadmill Desks

In case you haven’t heard, sitting for long periods of time (9+ hours for us office workers) isn’t good for your health, posture or metabolism. If you include time spent commuting to and from work and the hours lounging on the couch in front of the TV, this number easily rises. On average, Americans are inactive for 21 hours a day. If that doesn’t motivate you to get up and get moving during the day, I don’t know what will. A treadmill desk isn’t meant to be a substitute for aerobic exercise like running, biking and swimming, but it’s the perfect complement, especially during the workday.

One of the SyncShow values is Fitness, and as a company we make this a priority. Having the treadmill desk is a huge perk of working at SyncShow, and an easy way to burn a few extra calories. If your company doesn’t have a treadmill desk, there are plenty of other things you can do to get out of your seat during the day:

• Create your own standing desk. Turn an old cardboard box upside down on your desk (the taller you are, the bigger box you’ll need) and place your laptop on it. An instant standing desk!
• Use your lunch break wisely. If you have an hour lunch, you can definitely use this time to squeeze a workout in. If you’re a woman and worried about not having time to shower, do a low-impact workout like yoga or pilates so you have time to exercise and change back into your work clothes within your lunch hour.
• Since it’s winter and it’s dark when you go into the office and dark when you leave, it’s nice to get outside on your lunch break. Bring warm running clothes and grab a co-worker to go for a lunchtime run with you. You’ll be reenergized for the afternoon and you’ll get some vitamin D (in Cleveland we can only hope for the vitamin D part). If you’re not a runner, a brisk walk works just as well!
• Make internal meetings standing room only. Instead of going from sitting at your desk to sitting in a conference room, make internal team meetings standing meetings. It’s an opportunity for everyone to get up and stretch while still getting work done.
• Don’t forget about healthy eating. Consider buying a company blender so that team members can quickly whip up a healthy snack. It’s easy to store frozen fruit in the fridge and you don’t have to worry about it spoiling. This past holiday we got a Vitamix for the office. Now we can exercise on the treadmill desk and replenish with a smoothie afterward! We’re having fun trying out new recipes and even went on a team trip to the Vitamix headquarters for a cooking demonstration.  

Does your company offer any healthy living perks? Do you have any other ideas to get moving during the workday? I’d love to hear them!

Learn more about working at SyncShow in our Inbound Marketing Internship Recap blog post

Update: So far in February, we've walked 60.79 miles! If we keep up this pace, we could hit over 600 miles for the year, tripling 2014's distance!