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Walking is mystical. It’s transporting—literally and figuratively. Humans have walked for as long as they’ve been, well, human, and this ancient practice of putting one foot in front of the other has a magical capacity to help us forge connection, both between the spaces we traverse and the people we travel alongside. Unlike running or cycling, the culture around walking is expansive, inclusive. And in cities like New York, walking is as second nature as hailing a cab, but so much better for you.
Despite an inherited love for walking, I recently found myself going days without clocking steps outside the four-block radius of my apartment. Convenience was to blame, but only partially. The Sisyphean effort to work-life balance had worn me out. I work from home, and most days, it was easier to rotate from the desk to the couch to the kitchen table than to find a reason to wander outside. My hours were punctuated by cups of tea and occasional downward dogs. Thrilling.
But after some reflection, I took a leap—well, step—of faith. I’m writing this from my desk treadmill, also known as a walking pad. My entire team at the tech startup where I work full-time regularly logs onto meetings, heads bobbing in unison as they march along on walking pads of their own. Before joining the company, I’d eyed a few desk treadmills on Tiktok, but wrote off the clunky device as impractical, a bad for my charming (read: small) city apartment. Plus, I thought I could instate more regular walks instead. That effort was in vain, as were most attempts to up my daily step count. My work was sedentary, and I found it hard to muster the motivation to take a few laps around the block on breaks, even though I knew it would do me good.
I broke down and got the treadmill. I wanted to up my steps, but my deeper intention was to infuse some delight into working from home. It’s a luxury to be able to do so, but some days, I swear, I feel like staring at the same David Hockney exhibition poster hanging by my desk is going to break me. For Grace Clarke, a consultant and former editor, the “why” behind a walking pad was a little different. “I will not sugarcoat this: I want to stay fit, and I like feeling hot.” She goes on to say, “low-impact movement has been a part of my life since high school when I abandoned team sports for independent pursuit of physical health. A more virtuous and equally-true reason I use a walking pad is because walking has been shown to build up our brains.”
Cognitive function does have a nice ring to it. As an experiment, I tracked my walking pad usage over the past month with one goal in mind: walk every day. Distance or speed were not part of my intention. Making a habit out of this lay-flat hamster wheel was the only thing on my mind. And, like Clarke, I quickly learned some tasks are better executed, well, not in motion.
“I clean out my inbox, I organize Asana, I chit-chat on Twitter, and I do a lot of research on Reddit and Tiktok," she says of what’s best to get done—and I agree. “I just send myself links to everything I need to sit down and really digest and take action on later.”
Sandy Guttman, an artist and independent curator, pulls out her walking pad for something more akin to the “cozy cardio” trend happening online. “I worked from it more while I was a graduate student, completing some of my teaching assistant work like grading and prepping for class from the pad. But I found that to be a bit taxing, since I was dividing my body and my mind into two very different tasks. Instead, I use the walking pad solely for walking and jogging, allowing myself to watch movies and TV shows—incentivizing movement rather than trying to stack work on top.”
Midway through my first month of work-walking, I found my dedication dwindling, but I kept coming back to the pad every day, even if only for fifteen minutes. Some afternoons, instead of a second coffee, I bargained with myself to start on the walking pad. After half an hour, I felt energized, sans caffeine.
After posting about my pad on Instagram, I was excited to hear from Casey Lewis, author of the daily newsletter After School and avid walking pad user. So much so, she considered taking the show on the road. “My husband and I went to the Midwest for a couple of weeks during Christmas, and I considered packing it up in the car and taking it with me. Is that crazy? Kind of! But that's how much I love it.” Lewis and I share in thinking of ourselves as “not treadmill people,” but unlike me, she keeps up with running outdoors 15 to 20 miles every week, on top of her walking pad habit.
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It turns out, her walking pad is just the place to “get her zoomies out” when weather or a busy schedule keeps her trapped indoors. “I’ll start scrolling on TikTok, and before I know it, an hour has passed and I’ve walked three miles.” For Casey, working while walking feels almost like a cheat code, since she’s getting movement in while getting work done.
After using my walking pad consistently for a month, I have a few thoughts. The first is, ultra mini Uggs don’t count as walking shoes. If you're interested in hopping on, commit and lace something up. Leave your phone in the other room for deep work while on the conveyor belt. Ignore the “calories burned” calculator flashing at your feet. Break for urgent Slacks. And don’t take it too seriously.
If walking is enlightening, walking pads are store-bought epiphanies.
