Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I was reading Retrospace and it showed me something I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. It was the Total Body Shaper and my parents had one in the Seventies.

It hung on the door to the crawl space and furnace room for YEARS. My parents used it sometimes, but mostly, it was just an irritating pile of strings on a door handle.

Now, it’s all well and good to laugh at that old exercise product. Weren’t my parents funny back in the Seventies? They didn’t realize how silly that thing was.

Sadly, they STILL sell exercise equipment like this today. This is the Body Exerciser at Amazon.com

Just in case you thought it was a fluke, there are LOTS of these products available. Even Bally Total Fitness makes one: Bally Fitness Pilates Door Knob Rope Excerciser

They cost about the same money as they did back in the Seventies, but I don’t think they will give a better workout to you than they did to my poor mom and dad. Don’t let companies take your money with promises. Sure, they’ve changed the name from Total Body Shaper to Pilates Workout, but in the end, they’re still selling the same thing: empty promises.