For many of us who live a rather sedentary life between 9am and 5pm we’ll find ourselves tapping on a keyboard, sitting at a desk and staring at a screen. We’ve certainly found ways to make it more ergonomic with a wrist rest for when we use a mouse, a monitor stand to keep the screen at the right height and adjustable chairs to make sure our posture is perfect. In recent times we’ve seen the evolution of the desk whereby it can raise so we stand while we work, but now we experience the Bike Desk.
The Bike Desk is rather self explanatory given the name. It is the combination of cycling and your desk. If you’ve ridden an exercise bike before then this won’t be a difficult experience, if you haven’t then this still won’t be a difficult experience. The tricky part for some however might be the assembly of the latest office furniture.
The Bike Desk arrived in one large box, every item is market by a number and the instructions are relatively straight forward. Using the tools supplied we were able to be up and running quickly, the trickiest part was perhaps the tensioning wire for adding resistance to your spin experience.
What we loved before getting onto the Bike Desk was that there were so many adjustments to suit the height and size of you, the seat is wider than a traditional bicycle, it has a small backrest and the desk can actually be removed, exposing handlebars which essentially make it just an exercise bike.
The Bike Desk as mentioned earlier has a gear to add/remove resistance to your spin experience, this is also connected to a digital display which will track things like distance, duration, heart rate and more. If you are working and using a computer on your desk however you won’t be able to see the exercise display, which could be a good thing to avoid the distraction. The gear for adding and removing resistance is underneath the desk which also isn’t easy to access but a little feeling around and you’ll find the gear.
Sitting in the seat of the Bike Desk is a comfortable experience, your feet feel secure in the straps and the Bike Desk is solid enough to not feel like it rocks or jolts as you peddle. With the laptop on the desk we start some moderate cycle work and focus on the tasks at hand.
What occurs to you quickly is that the desk is sturdy and your peddling is not impacting your ability to accurately type or navigate the cursor. What we do notice though is that when higher levels of concentration is required our legs slowed and when we were in a teleconference which didn’t require as much focus we were able to increase pace without thinking about it. This is simply due to our brain making decisions on what steals our attention and we can find ourselves slowing or stopping our legs entirely as we complete our tasks at hand.
Shortly after we began using our new desk we received a lot more attention than usual and it wasn’t because of our hair style. Owning one of these will bring you plenty of attention so we decided to place it in a more communal area where it could be shared for perhaps an hour at a time. We placed a bell to alert people when the bike is about to become free and also a helmet if OH&S concerns were ever raised.
This might be the safest and most productive use of a bicycle that we’ve ever experienced. Not many people can say that during their last video conference they rode 3 kilometres and remained completely safe the whole time. Perhaps our biggest surprise here is actually the price, the Bike Desk will cost you $377 which is cheaper than most ergonomic chairs and many standing desks on the market.
More info: BikeDesk.com.au
