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

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Show, Motorized 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.

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.

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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, 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 use 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@video BenGreenfieldFitness.com Trueform that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com T R U Eform. And 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 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.

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

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

Yeah, so I didn't expect to end up here. An unlikely spot for me. But like you said, I mean, 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 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 is more sort of strongman, powerlifting activity than running. But always thought that running as an athlete is important to. To be able to do, you know, 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, with large frame, six four.

And unless you want to be in the World's strongest man competition.

Right.

Those guys got to avoid aerobics like the plague even.

Those guys need to have an aerobic face. Right?

Well, I. I don't know. Like. Like I had. Do you know who Dan John is?

I know of him.

Okay. Yeah, he's like this legendary strength coach. I had him on the show a couple years ago. We talked about mass gain, and basically his recommendation for mass gain was like, you lift heavy stuff like four times a week and Then other than that, you eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sit on the couch. And I don't necessarily endorse that as a way to be. As a way to be healthy.

Well, these strongmen need to do reps and do things quickly, and they need to have anaerobic and aerobic capacity for that kind of.

Yeah.

So, but anyway, so, you know, I just. I thought that running was. Was important and had limitations to be able to do it because. Because of a couple of accidents, I don't have any cartilage or mobility in my ankle. So running for somebody that's my size presents problems and, you know, even walking. So, you know, for years I tried, you know, orthotics, structured boots, braces, and we just kept getting worse and worse and more and more pain and ended up finding minimal shoes. Probably at the born to run time, I read a little excerpt that held my attention for long enough, bought a pair of five fingers and sort of haven't looked back. Immediately saw the benefits of that and began to slowly understand what it means to have quality movement, to have mobility, have flexibility, have strength and stability and what positions your body should be in. And, you know, my reasons are purely selfish. I'm. I'm only interested in, you know, feeling better. And that's sort of this path that I've been on now, you know, able to run moderate distances without pain. In fact, you'll appreciate this. Ran a marathon on a true form with the team two days ago, and I think my contribution was probably five and a half miles by the time we put it all together and felt better the following day than I did the day that I woke up and we did that.

You ran a whole marathon on the true uniform?

No, no, no. Our team ran a full marathon. I ran about five and a half miles, I think of the.

Of it, I guess.

But, you know, again, for, you know, five and a half miles on the true form is no joke, right?

So, yeah, I mean, like, I'll be honest with you, dude. I use my true form for long walks while I'm doing consults and while I'm working at my computer. But then when I actually go on runs on it, I tend to do sprints, right? And maybe it's because I. And I know you tried to talk me into putting like an electronic dashboard and stuff on mine, and I didn't. So I'm just like, running while staring out the window. So for me, it's more palatable to just, like, get on, do it. So I'll do like 10 by 60 second sprints with like, you know, 30 second bouts where I'm down on the ground doing planks in between each, that type of thing.

But yeah, so you can, you can challenge yourself even more by putting a time frame on your run and say, you know, in 20 minutes to, even to start out would be a lot. Right. But, but what that does is it forces you to focus on your mechanics and your, your breathing and your respiration. Because if you're doing it inefficiently, you'll get like two or three minutes in and you'll be like, this is, you know, this is brutal. Right? There's no way I can do 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Suppose you, suppose you have the capacity for 20, challenge yourself for 30, and then you force yourself to find ways to move and run more efficiently that require less effort. You know, as we say, run elastically so that you're recruiting less musculature to, to move your legs. You know, keep your body in a, in a neutral position so that you're not having to, to work stabilizing muscles to, to offset that and focus on your breathing. And you know, when you do that, that, to me is when you really start to make changes in your, in your quality of movement because you're forced to.

Yeah.

You know, so you can, if you've got a big enough motor, right. You can run for 30 seconds no matter what. Right. It doesn't matter what position you're in, but you know, eventually, if you're jogging for, for over a period of time, you have to focus on, on your quality of movement.

Yeah.

Yeah. So try it, try it like that. And then, you know, I keep promising it, but we're, we're super close on our app, so you'll be able to just hook your smartphone up to Bluetooth signal coming off of the Trueform and get your distance and ideally your steps and cadence and maybe even watts.

Yeah. That's kind of a discussion that I'd be happy to delve into with folks, especially in the comments section for this particular episode, because I know that, for example, the website Slow Twitch, which is a really popular website for endurance athletes, they recently had an article about how there are newer websites now popping up where you can be wearing a foot pod while you're running. Right. Like whether you're on a manual treadmill or whether you're on like a traditional motorized treadmill and you can actually have competitions with other people who are running. And pretty much all you need to know, right, is how fast you're going like where your foot pod is and you can race these other folks. And so I believe that technology and like you mentioned, Jeff, I know you're developing an app for the trueform, but that technology is like right around the corner. I mean, it's obviously already there with cycling. It's just, there's not a lot going on at this point with, with treadmill running and competitions for treadmill running, there.

Are a lot of wearables, you know, because we're at the front of the, of the running space, we meet a lot of these folks and there are, there are a lot of wearables coming to market that provide some information and some data. You know, I mean, an expert runner wouldn't be all that impressed or, you know, an elite coach probably by what the, what the wearables have to say. But I think for the average person, if, you know, if they see value in a Fitbit, they certainly would see value on some of this accelerometer data that's coming to the market or already on the market now.

Yeah, I'd actually like to eventually get a foot pod and just start to even sync the foot pod to my phone while I'm doing some of these runs on the True form. So if you were listening in and you are a techno nerd and want to leave some information on foot pods, on good apps that you like to use with them, et cetera, go ahead, make my day. Because I'd love to look into that stuff. But in the meantime. Yeah, yeah, so. Oh, by the way, for those of you listening in the show, notes are over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Trueform Trueform. In the meantime, Jeff, first question that I have for you about this treadmill, and I've noticed other manual treadmills from other folks are kind of shaped this way too, but it's curved, right? Like these manual treadmills are curved. They go up on either end and kind of down in the middle. Why are they shaped the way that they're shaped?

So, you know, manual treadmill, you've basically, you've got two options, right? And, you know, we're not innovators in the idea to make it curved any more than anybody else is the, you know, this curved non motorized treadmill. And non motorized treadmills go back at least a couple hundred years, you know, back from a patent filing, and you think that, you know, this is how people, you know, used to, used to mill their corn or churn their butter in their kitchen, right? They'd put, you know, themselves or their goats or whatever on a, on a treadmill and just walk and grind this stuff up. So really the treadmill space changed when motors came about and you know, we saw the value in going back to a non motorized treadmill. And so if you have a flat deck that's on an angle, essentially your propulsion is just pushing down. And you know, in even a worst case, maybe you're holding on to the handrail in front of you and pushing sort of like pushing a sled, which is an appropriate exercise, but not running. Right. So a curve shape allows you to get a little bit of momentum and drop as your foot strikes underneath you. And if the curve is just right and your technology is just right, as we feel that ours is, then you can pull your foot up behind you and you can run in a natural running form type position. And you know, currently, I guess there are other people coming to market and our, in our competitor I guess is from what we're told, from what they've told us, they're, they've copied the true form. So I guess that that's coming out this year.

Is that, is that like the company Woodway?

Yeah, that's right. So, you know, from what, what they've told us and what we've heard is they're making what they're calling a shallower curve. So they have the Woodway curve, which is a really steep curve, and the belt just kind of flies underneath you and has its own inertia, in my opinion. And what that does is it acts more like a motorized treadmill and drags your foot behind you.

So. So you can technically cheat on that treadmill.

Well, you know, I don't know if it's cheating. You know, I think if, if, if anything, the thing is a beast to run on. You talk about intervals. I mean, it just accelerates it. You know, you, you run like, like you're flying. Certainly I've never run or moved that fast in, in real space.

So you could use something like that to increase your cadence, for example.

Yeah, if you thought that you wanted to train a faster cadence, you could, you could do that. If you wanted to jump on and off and not have to worry a whole lot about your body position and just have it go and, you know, get yourself. You know, for instance, if you're going to do some anaerobic training and get your heart rate spiked really fast, you know, that would be an option for you. True form is different in that it requires you to recruit. I, I feel more stabilizing muscles to hold your body into, into a healthy upright position as opposed to just kind of going with, you know, wherever the tremor takes you. But, but like I said, I mean, I guess they, they understand the value proposition that we've brought to the market and I guess they're going to come out with one. And we haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure it'll be good quality. They make good quality stuff. You know, I don't know what the feel of it will be, but. And then there are other people, I guess, coming to market as well. I read articles saying that they're releasing stuff this year within the non motorized space. So, you know, yet to be determined. But you know, right now that the true form, there are essentially two of us in the space and we have a less steep curve intentionally. And as you found, it's really appropriate for walking, controlling your pace, for jogging, slowing down to a walk, sprinting, slowing down to a walk, you don't need to jump off. You just use your body position to control your speed.

So it's basically forcing you to lean forward and use more of like a, like a mid to front forefoot strike. Is that correct?

You know, yes, absolutely. I think what we would in an effort to, you know, not have people say, well, yeah, but you can do this and this. So really what we're talking about from a forward lean, we're not talking about a lean from your waist, we're talking about a lean from your ankles, essentially. So your body is, is in a, in a more, you know, planar position. Right. You're not folded at your waist. You're, you're, you're upright and your lean is coming from your ankles, which gives you forward momentum. So if you think about it, you can stand there and bend at your waist and not move forward, right? So you're not gaining any efficiency in that space. You're still in a, you know, in a, in a forward neutral position. You're not moving forward if you stand straight up and you lean from your ankles. You, if you fall forward. So, so that's an, that's a more efficient position to be in because, you know, you're, you're having the benefit of, of a forward fall in your run.

Okay.

Yeah, so, so yeah, leaning forward, but leaning from your ankles. And the, you know, the, the other important thing is that you're pulling your foot up behind you and that's loading so that it then falls down. And then what we're focused on is not necessarily what part of your foot hits the ground first, but rather where Your foot hits the ground, and if your foot is landing just under right in front of your center of mass, then you're going to be able to load your foot behind you again quickly and get your foot back down again with your forward fall. And, you know, all of a sudden you're moving forward using, you know, free energy from your forward fall.

Yeah, well, what I find is, like, when I'm leaning back like I can on a MOT motorized treadmill, I can't barely get. Or I. I can barely get the. The belt to move like, it just won't go. So you seem to have to have your center of gravity forward. And you're saying you achieve that through.

Through forward ankle, Right, Right, yeah.

Forward lean.

So if you, you know, you, you just stand there in the room, but, you know, don't. You don't need to be on. On the true form forward, and you, you know, certainly don't need to be on any other space. Stand in your room and bend at your waist and see how far forward you go and stand there. Stand straight up and bend at your ankles and see yourself fall forward and realize that you just need to do a thousand repetitions of that and run a mile.

Now, are there specific drills that you can do on the treadmill? Sure.

Yeah. There are tons of drills you can do on the treadmill and off to, you know, to learn, you know, the right. Right running form and do gate retraining.

So what would be an example of, like, some of the better ones you could do either on or off the treadmill that you think would really enhance your ability?

You know? You know, one thing that you can do is tie, you know, an elastic, you know, exercise band to a fixed structure. You know, we just put it around the true form arm and put it around your waist and run in place. And you'll find the best way to run in place is to keep your body straight and lean from your ankles and pull your feet behind you. And it's a great cadence trainer.

Wait, so where is the elastic band going?

So it's anchored to something, and then it goes around your waist.

Anchored to something behind you?

Yes.

Okay, gotcha. So you're running with an elastic band around your waist, and what is that forcing you to do?

It's forcing you to get a forward lean, to have your hips moving forward, not arching your butt back and pulling your foot up behind you.

Okay, got it.

That's a great drill to, to train that style of, of, you know, a pull behind you pose. Running is. Uses a lot that A lot. We use that in our training. You know, that's a drill that can be done that. You know, you don't need any fancy piece of equipment. You just need an elastic band.

Got it. Yeah, that's. That's a cool drill. I'm going to try that one. What's, what's an example of another one you could do?

You know, on the true form, if you try to jog at a, at a slower pace. So you're on there sprinting, right? So which allow more latitude with your form. If you slow it down and try to maintain a high cadence, you then can focus on your body position and your foot pulling behind you, elastically loading, you know, using your hips to get your leg come forward, to come forward again. And, you know, I mean, if there's anything that I encourage people to do, whether they're an elite Ironman triathlete, an elite CrossFit, a runner, or somebody, you know, who's just wanting to successfully complete a 5K, I challenge everybody to run at a comfortable heart rate for a sustained period of time, because then you focus on balance, you focus on form, you focus on efficient movement, elastic movement. And I just, I. And I can't stress that enough because if you get on and you sprint, you know, you can be a hot mess and jump off and, and not focused on, on your move. And I'm sure you see it, Ben, when you walk on there. I don't know if you, if you ever. Do you ever, you know, play a little bit and do some shuttles or, or spin around?

I've tried some sideways walking and a little bit of backwards walking. I haven't, I haven't done specific, like shuttle drills, though.

Yeah, I mean, well, and again, it doesn't need to be. I know you're a disciplined guy, but it doesn't need to be a drill. Right. It's just while you're, you know, I think we, we lose this along the way when we get serious and focused on our careers and our family. But, you know, you can just play on it, right? You just screw around, you know, especially if you're on a, if you're on a call or whatever, you know, you can do a couple of shuttles and it doesn't have to be a certain number for a certain period of time. You screw around on there.

Now, when you say shuttle, for people listening in, can you describe what you mean?

Yeah. So a shuttle is, you know, in the case of being on the Trueform, which is the cool thing is you can't Cheat. So you have to push and pull with your legs. So you turn sideways on the, on the belt so you're facing 90 degrees to forward one side or the other. And then you, you kind of, I don't know, you shuttle run. We have all of these exercises on our website on our Trueform University.

Oh, you do?

Okay, yeah, yeah, shoot. I think we had 80 videos on there showing all of this stuff, so. And then. So you, you don't grapevine your legs. That's called carioca. You literally just sort of like a side hop and you push with your back foot, you pull with your front foot, and you kind of hop facing sideways. And with the true form, your feet have to be under center of mass and you have to push and pull. If they're not under your center of mass and you're not both pushing and pulling, you could only get one step, and then you end up at the wrong end of the belt, depending on what, what other part of the exercise you left off your front or the back of the machine.

Right.

So it's a, it's a great exercise in training lateral movement, because many lateral injuries on the field occur as a result of your. Of your leg being an extension. My leg is two feet, you know, out to my right or left or 3ft, and I'm cutting back. I'm exposing my ACL and MCL to more higher angles of force than I am if my feet are staying underneath my center of mass. So, you know, quicker shuttle, pushing and pulling feet under your center of mass is a safer position to be in than, you know, your rear leg in full extension out to the side, you know, exposed to, to stress, you know, up and down from underneath. So.

Right.

Um, it's a, it's a terrific drill, you know, especially for, you know, high school students and, you know, and athletes and also, you know, from a glute meat standpoint, for runners and triathletes that are notoriously weak, you know, in their glutes and in their glute meat, it's a really good exercise to a. Awaken that muscle group. It, you know, it might not only be or might not be that there's not enough strength there, it may be just that the muscles aren't activated. So these, these repetitions can, can, you know, build that, those motor patterns for you and, you know, awaken your, your kinetic chain to, to what it's supposed to be doing.

Now, I have a few questions. Oh, go ahead, play a little bit.

When you're on there and, and you know, And I, you know, I'll mess around, you know, certainly not a lot of grace on, on my part, you know, and I'll mess around trying to do, you know, three 60s and, and you know, again, it's, it's quick feet. And to me it's just a who, what position that your upper body's in, your midline, what you're squeezing, you know, your core, your glutes for stabilization, you know, all, all good stuff. And you know, it could be fun if, you know, if you've got your, your desk in your workplace like you do and as I do now.

When I found the Trueform, you actually worked with me to develop a new walking version of the Trueform treadmill that would allow it to be placed in front of, of a standing desk. So we kind of like chopped off the dashboard, opened up the front cockpit and allowed it to be like shoved up against, you know, like I use a Rebel desk, for example. But you know, there's like the Vera desk, there's the focal upright desk. But any of these desks, it's hard to actually put a standard running treadmill in front of them because that front railing just like scrubs up against and scrapes against the actual desk itself. So the walking desk version that I use has no like front dashboard on it, no front railing. But I wanted to make sure that I, that I clear up the air about some of the other versions of the Trueform that you have. All of them are kind of built like a tank, basically. And I know that you guys use. Was it like steel bearings or something like that?

Well, yeah, everything is steel. There's no, well, I think I can say there is no plastic.

Yeah, I mean, they're outside of the.

Running surface, which is a vulcanized rubber. Yeah, you know, there's no, there's no plastic in there. It's, it's, you know, like you said, it's built like a tank.

Yeah, they're seriously well built. But you've got, you've got a few different models aside from that walking desk that I talked about, you've got the Enduro, the lowrider, and the performance. Now what kind of people would use which of those models if folks weren't going to put these next to a standing desk and just wanted to use it for training. What's the difference, differentiation between those three models?

Okay, so all of the bases on all four models, including the walking desk, are exactly the same. So what we're talking about is a handrail configuration for different applications. So as you said, the walking desk has no front handrail. We don't encourage people to run on that because if there is a mishap and they're falling forward, there's no front handrail there.

So.

And the, I guess maybe we'll start with the Enduro because that's the one that's, that's the normal handrail configuration. So those handrails are, are in a place that is typical of other exercise cardio equipment. So it's at the height and the width that you would expect it to be as you're exercising. It feels safe. You can hold on to the sides and walk without being. For most people, I mean, obviously depending on how long your torso and arms are and your legs. But for most people you can walk in an upright position and hold on for stability on one or both sides. And so that's the standard model. The Enduro, the lowrider was actually our original handrail configuration and we've kept it. Those handrails are low and inside, so the, the actual overall width of the trueform is more narrow and it's 35 inches. So it can pass through a normal door, a 36 inch door, without taking the handrails off. So for somebody that wanted to move it in and out of a room or move it outside to run and then move it back in. And then the other thing that we find with a lot of endurance athletes, triathletes, folks that are training at home, training centers that are designed for long, you know, for ultra long, long distance runners and triathletes, is that the display and the handrails are really kind of out of sight, out of your line of sight because you should be looking forward anyway so that you're not compromising your midline and your head position should be neutral. So you know you're putting less stress on your body beneath it. So as you're looking out and forward, you really don't see the handrails and the, and the display. So you're running in a sort of a free running space and you'll see a lot of folks that are going to hop on and run for half hour, an hour or whatever. They'll throw a towel over the display anyway because they don't really want that constant reminder and they'll get lost in their own world and look out at their view. And so that's the lowrider. And again, a lot of triathletes will buy it for their house, that kind of thing. And then the performance handrail is exactly the opposite of the lowrider so the handrails are higher in the front and forward. And what that does is it allows a large athlete, you know, somebody that's, you know, say 6, 3, 6, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8 to sprint and have a really high knee drive and not worry about whether or not they're going to come in contact with the display and the, and the handrail in front of them. And also the performance has a tethering system behind them. So we find that some, some folks, when they run really fast, if they're running, you know, 15, 18 miles an hour for a sustained period of time, they'll move farther up the curve than we want them to and they'll be at a, at a higher impact point on the front end of the true form. And so we just provide a really light tethering system. It's a, it's a tiny bit of pressure to hold them in place and into what we feel is a sweet spot, you know, which, you know, in your case, Ben, is right around those bolt heads that are on the, on the front and that, you know, holds, holds folks into that position if they're, you know, balls to the wall, you know.

Yeah. So you don't want to run too close to the front of this thing.

Well, you would. What happens is people start to make compensations and whether it's because they're striking so high on the angle or whether it's because they're worried about running into the handrail because they've got so much knee drive and they're so big and they're so fast, then they make a modification and we don't, you know, that's, that's, you know, the true form is about exactly like it sounds. True form. Right. So we don't want people having to make modifications. We want people focused on efficient quality movements. And if they have to make a compensation for one reason or another, then, then it's, it's not consistent with what our message is.

Yeah.

So, you know, but you really have to be a fast runner and you have to be a big runner, you know, to run into that issue. But, you know, we have a lot of performance gyms that, that, that get the performance model, not surprisingly.

Yeah. And one thing I noticed that you brought up, and I never noticed it before you pointed out, is this performance model actually has that wraparound rail that goes behind us. You can literally just like attach a band to that rather than finding a place in the room behind you to attach a band to and use that for the more high intensity explosive Workouts to keep you reined in from running off the front of the treadmill.

Right, right. And you won't run off the front, but you'll make, like I said, you'll.

Yeah.

Change something and it just isn't, it isn't our. It's not what we want to be about.

And it'll force you again to like, to like, use, use proper biomechanics if you have that, that band wrapped around you.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. It doesn't. It can be anything. I, I prefer something that's not elastic because with the elastic stuff, it loads. And so when you go from your sprint to your stop, you know, kind of slingshot you back a little bit. So, you know, just get any third sort of nylon thing to hold you in place. But some people prefer band and, you know, you can attach whatever you want. And then the, and then I, I think in the spring here we'll be releasing our. It's in beta right now. It looks great. Our resistance that we're adding to the belt. So you'll be able to. Like we talked about before with a sled, you'll have the, the ability to attach yourself to the back of the performance model and add resistance to the, to the belt.

Right.

And it'll be as though you're pulling a sled or you could put your hands on the handrail in front of you and drive backward and it'll be though. As though you're pushing a sled. And we've. We've had this in the works for a long time. We've just waited to release it because it's, again, it's the opposite of what we're talking about from a running standpoint. And, you know, when people see the true form, they want to know if the, if the incline can change, if they can add resistance. And that's not what we're about. Right. We're about having the right quality type of movement. Not, not more resistance. It's not an elliptical, it's not a treadmill where you increase incline. I mean, really, it's already hard enough. It's, you know, even for the most efficient runners, it's 20% more effort, more caloric burn, more, more musculature recruitment, more metabolic recruitment. And then as you come off of, you know, super elite and 20%, you know that the true form for a regular person could be 30, 40% more effort. So the last thing that you need to do is, you know, add these, add these complications which, which take away from reinforcing good motor Patterns, right. So, but, but we're seeing so many performance gyms. You know, they have limited space, right. So they, they need to have 50 yards or at least 40 yards of turf in order to have a, a quality sled workout. And you know, we want to be able to provide that same kind of experience and not leave the, you know, not leave the little six foot space that we're in with the True form. So yeah, so that's coming in, you know, we're expecting people, you know, to buy our turf model, you know, with that so that they're like, they're on turf pushing and pulling sleds.

So yeah, that makes sense. Now I'm linking to all this stuff in the show notes. For those of you listening in, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Trueform Check out these other models and if you want to use the model that I use again, I'll show you exactly what it looks like. I'll put a picture there, but it's super convenient. You can both get your work done. Typing, consulting. I'm doing voice dictation now for my writing, which is super easy to do on the treadmill. And I think it's awesome because you can use it as a pretty potent fitness tool as well. You know, throwing in sprints and some of the drills that Jeff and I have talked about. And it's on my list of things to do now to get a band put behind it to try that as well. It's a great idea and I hadn't thought of that before. You can also get a discount on, on a True form on, on this version that I have with the modified railing system. And to do that there's a discount code. The discount code you can use is Ben. That's all caps, Ben. And I'll put a link in the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com trueform to where when you head over to Jeff's website and use that discount code, you can save pretty tremendously and get one shipped to your house. And it does have little wheels on it so you can wheel it through your house to the room that you want it in. Jeff, thanks for coming on the show, man, and sharing this stuff with us.

No, it's great to be on the show and love following you and funny to see the connections that are made along the way. Joe Di from Spartan Race has a true form for his desk as well. So we've got that thread between us.

It's great. There's actually a lot of folks I've been talking to are setting these things up on their desk, which is awesome. And I'm glad to see that folks are kind of going above and beyond that little manual treadmill that only goes four miles an hour, and instead using the stuff that you can actually become a better athlete with as well.

So, well, and it's so much, it's so much healthier, right? You're getting your hips opened up, you're getting your, your upper body into, into quality, you know, upright position. And, and everything we do in life puts us in opposite that, right? When you're sitting, you're texting, you're typing, you're on your computer, you're cooking at the stove, you know, you're, you're in a compromised position. And the great thing about walking on a true form is that you have to be upright. And it offsets many of the ills of modern day life. So it's a good opportunity.

Cool. Well, folks, if you're listening in, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com TrueForm and remember, you've got a discount code. You can use all caps. Ben, check it out. I highly recommend this thing. And Jeff's got great customer service too, if you call him up and tell him what you need. So, Jeff, thanks for coming on the show, man.

No, you bet. Thanks for having me, Ben. Talk to you soon.

You too. All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Jeff Vernon signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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