With all the news about the dangers of sitting behind the desk for extended periods of time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the different ways to keep my body moving even while I’m working. Not everyone works from home and can take a yoga break to get the blood flowing like I can. Nor do all of us work for a company that makes treadmill desks freely available to us. And unfortunately, most of us don’t have access to this trendsetting hamster wheel standing desk. However, I was fortunate enough to be offered the chance to review 3D Innovation’s DeskCycle.

What exactly is the DeskCycle? Well, just as you might guess, it’s a cycle that fits under your desk. At 10-inches tall, DeskCycle claims to be 5 inches shorter than other magnetic bikes. For the average-sized person, it can be used under a 27-inch or taller desk. The shorter your desk or the longer your legs are, the further back you’ll have to push the chair to avoid banging your knees on the desk.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Cem2f43SI]

It’s also one of the quietest home exercise bikes of any style that I’ve used, which is helpful if you have co-workers. With such smooth and even pedaling, which is much less harsh on the joints, I have been biking without losing concentration while writing articles over the past week and a half.

A tension control goes from 1 to 8, with the larger numbers providing more resistance—enough that even level 5 required me to put some power in my pedaling. At this stage in the game, cycling at the highest resistance is not conducive to typing for me, but I feel comfortable in the middle. I also found the pedaling to be quieter with less resistance when using the DeskCycle on non-carpeted, uneven ground. The faster and smoother I could ride, the easier it was to focus on my work.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UUszuKHCus]

Your chair also makes a huge difference in the ease of your ride. As you can see in the first part of this video, the chair gets bouncier with greater tension. In the second part of the video, I am on uneven, wooden floors in a creaky chair. Once I positioned myself well and reached the pace I was most comfortable with, however, it was smooth riding from there.

To keep track of your workout, the battery-operated LDC display is a useful tool.  Clicking it on while I cycle, I can see my speed, distance covered, how long I’ve been riding, and the amount of calories I’m burning. An online calorie calculator from DeskCycle allows you to enter your age, gender, height and weight, along with the distance you rode, on which resistance dial setting for how long a period of time to calculate the number of calories you burned.

You can currently buy the DeskCycle or from MiniPedalers.com for $159, or on Amazon for the same price with free shipping.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8GyfsiKn8s]

Honestly, I have loved using it ever since I found my riding groove. I wrote this review while cycling, in fact! It’s a soothing background activity that also happens to give you a pretty decent lower body workout. It’s a great way to break up the long work day, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to get their bodies moving while putting in long hours behind the desk.