Above: You can exercise your feet with Cubii while sitting.
Advances in technology promote a sedentary lifestyle. If you sit at a desk for more than six hours, you may want something like Cubii to keep your body active throughout the day.
FitnessCube’s just-launched Cubii elliptical trainer fits under your desk so you can pedal while you’re working. It can help you stay more active and burn calories, but it won’t necessarily make you sweat and become the stinker of the office.
Arnav Dalmia, cofounder of FitnessCubed and a recent graduate from the University of Chicago, said he started the company and created Cubii to help people address the “sitting disease.”
“Most of us spend our day sitting, and sitting inactive is not healthy,” he said. “Even if we take out time and go to the gym every day, sitting for longer hours is still harmful for us because human beings have not evolved to sit for long periods.”
Above: Cubii app
Dalmia got the idea while working at an internship in a large corporation. He was sitting around a lot at his desk, and he figured it was very bad for him. So he sought a way to escape.
The company is raising $80,000 in a Kickstarter campaign that ends in seven days. It has $73,876 from 303 backers as I write this. After that, FitnessCubed hopes to raise seed funding.
It costs $350, which isn’t that cheap. But it’s less expensive than changing around your office furniture or buying a standing desk. You can track your activity via a Cubii mobile app. And Cubii wirelessly integrates with smartphones via Bluetooth. An open applications programming interface lets users sync their app to other fitness trackers too.
A lot of fitness trackers are already on the market, but Dalmia said there are few sources of exercise to complement them. Cubii can act like an accessory for those trackers, he said.
Above: FitnessCubed founders Arnav Dalmia, Shivani Jain, and Ryota Sekine.
The founders — Dalmia, Shivani Jain, and Ryota Sekine — started the company in Chicago in August 2013 with no prior experience in engineering or design. They put the product together through trial and error. The elliptical trainer is designed so that your knees don’t hit your desk. The smooth motion eventually becomes unconscious, Dalmia said.
Some office managers might see Cubii as unorthodox, but the modern workplace is changing and there’s more focus on the health and wellness of employees. After all, a healthier workforce incurs lower medical costs, has higher productivity, and faces lower insurance payments.
Rivals include TrekDesk, TreadDesk, Steelcase Walkstation, LifeSpan, StirKinect, other treadmill desks, and standing desks. But not everyone has the space in the office to get a treadmill desk or a standing desk, Dalmia said. And those solutions could cost $1,000 to $3,000.
The company participated in the Polsky Accelerator at the University of Chicago.
“You may not always have time to exercise, but you will always have time to sit and be fit,” Dalmia said.
I don’t know about you guys, but I really need this thing. Check it out in the video below.
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