The Longevity Life Plan » fitness equipment

The Entertrainer

Cliff Long — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:57:31 +0000

Now here’s an interesting idea. An exercise gizmo that turns down the volume of your TV if you’re slacking off during your cardio workout. Keep slacking off and it shuts the TV off completely.

I guess this might work, if you remove all of the cozy furniture in your family room and replace it with stationary bikes and treadmills. This could be an interesting weapon in the battle against childhood obesity. Then again, some could consider that child abuse.

Here are some news clips of the device in action.

The Entertrainer is available for $139.

Stick to the Tried and True

Cliff Long — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:07:09 +0000

I’ve seen a lot of fitness fads come and go. Some are completely ridiculous, from a standpoint of their longevity within the marketplace, and some are things that have been around and come back. Not to long ago, I had a client ask me about kettlebell training. He had heard about the new trend and how it achieves these great results. The term kettlebell first appeared in a Russian dictionary in 1704 and they have been used in that country progressively since the early 1900’s. There was a surge in popularity in the United States in the 50’s and 60’s and they have reappeared as a trendy thing to do in the last 5 years. I don’t deny the their value. They are a great tool that can produce significant results, both in terms of strength increases and body composition changes. I don’t even mean to rant about kettlebells here.

What is on my mind are our need to keep with the latest fad or trendy venture in order to keep fit. Variety is the spice of life and exercise programs do need to change to keep the body guessing and producing results. From this point of view, I understand incorporating different exercise techniques into your program. But many times we become reliant on the fads to get started or stay with their fitness goals. When the fads dies, so does our exercise routine.

I suggest we use the fads to invigorate our existing exercise programs and help us to move to the results we want, but not set our exercise sail by the winds of fitness trends that continue to blow through with regularity. If we do, we will set ourselves up for the same fate as those fads…a glorious rise, followed by a fall into obscurity.

If you like to know about the current fitness trends out there, read this Newsweek article, Seven Silly Fitness Fads. These will allow you to shake, strip, and expel your way to good shape.

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

Cliff Long — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:48:36 +0000

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.