Who’s to Blame for all that Evil Exercise Equipment?

According to Boing Boing (my new favorite blog site) in Origins of Exercise Equipment, his name would be Gustav Zander, a Swedish physician. He filled his first “gym” with his machines late in the 19th century. His mechanical horse was the first version of now what we call the Stairmaster. He built this to simulate a “natural” activity. Personally, I don’t find these things natural, and if I wanted to feel some cardiovascular effects from doing a stair climbing like motion…I’ll climb stairs. It’s got to be better than standing in one place doing it.

Even though create in Europe his equipment became the prototype of the exercise equipment so frequently seen in the gyms and exercise studios across America. In selling his machines to an American audience he said,

“…a preventative against the evils engendered by a sedentary life and the seclusion of the office.”

Well at least we know that as time goes by and many things change, some things stay the same.