I’ve had my Nordictrack treadmill for over six years. It has been a really good machine. It got a little damaged in the move, so we replaced a part. It has been running with me every day for the last year, ever since we moved it out of storage.
About a month ago, however, the tread started slipping. (more…)
I usually don’t like to recommend unnecessary equipment. If you want to get fit, all you need are a good pair of shoes and a door to walk out of. Too many times I’ve seen people say that they can’t exercise because they don’t have a gym membership or a treadmill. You don’t need those things. All you need to do is get your butt out of the door every day and run.
Then again, I’m a gadget freak. I love to play with new exercise toys. Sometimes a new exercise toy will inspire me for months. Just having a new toy to play with when I get my butt out the door is enough to keep me exercising sometimes. This looks like a fun new toy:
This is a speedometer, heart rate monitor and a link to upload your workout data to the computer. There is a pod that connects to your shoe that measures your distance and speed, a watch for your wrist, a heart rate monitor strap and a USB uplink to connect to your computer. If you don’t want to shell out $250, you can pick and choose which parts you want and upgrade later.
Benefits:
Speedometer, heart rate monitor, distance and chronometer all on one watch. They all display on one screen. You won’t have to push buttons to see what you want.
Compared to GPS systems, it is relatively inexpensive. Additionally, GPS tracking has problems in “urban canyonsâ€, where the signal bounces off the large buildings.
Negatives:
The watch is rather large and bulky. The display is designed to be easy to see while running or walking, but that makes it slightly unwieldy, especially if you’re a woman.
If you already have a heart rate monitor, stopwatch or distance meter, you would have to buy extra items in order to have them all be in one watch. Either that or wear two watches.
The uplink to your computer is an Internet based system, which is unnecessary. I would prefer software that just runs on my computer. I don’t want to depend on my unreliable ISP in order to upload my workout data.
My current heart rate monitor is a Timex, so you know it’s going to last a hundred years. I’m thinking that I’ll never get a chance to try this new toy, but if you are in the market for a heart rate monitor, it looks like this one will give you the extra benefits of speedometer and distance measurement. Check it out.
It looks like Konami is thinking about marketing a DDR program that is meant for a group of up to eight people and to be used in a health club.
This sounds like a great idea. I’ve tried to sponsor workouts on Xbox Live and the four person limitation has impeded things at times. I wonder how it will be implemented in the United States…
My first mistake was to buy my tennis shoes online. I guess I really had to because all the Lady Footlockers in the city closed down and the regular Footlockers didn’t carry my shoes. I thought it would be great. All I needed to do was to buy the exact same model of my beloved shoes directly from the manufacturer. It worked. They came in the mail and fit like a dream. I’m on my third mail-ordered pair.
Of course, with the shoes came the advertisements for the fancy exercise clothes. You know the really cute outfits where the tops match the stripes on the bottoms. The pants are made of some really cool fabric that magically cools down the athlete in the summer and keeps her warm in the winter. Oh, and by the way, the shorts cost twenty bucks apiece. Are they worth it?
This article from the American Council on Exercise leaves the answer open. While they don’t technically reduce skin temperature, they do allow sweat to evaporate quicker than cotton. I have a couple of tops that are made out of that space age fabric and the only thing that I’ve noticed is that they feel lighter and silkier than the cotton tank tops I usually run in. Mostly, I just like them because the tops match the color of the stripe on the side of the pants.
The market is filled with tiny MP3 players that you can just wrap around your arm and take with you on a run or to the gym. Microsoft has an article that seems to be in response to the iPod Shuffle, but the points they bring up are valid.
They do a good job of explaining why the flash memory players are better than the hard drive players (such as the iPod). They fail to tell you that flash players are good because they are so much smaller than hard drive players. They recommend players that have a display, which I agree with. I really wish Apple had included a small, one-line scrolling LCD display on the side of the Shuffle. But then again, the Shuffle looks so cool.
I personally use my Palm OS device with the MP3 player software that came with it. The songs are stored on an SD card and I can have hours of music at my fingertips. Not everyone is willing to trick out their Palm just so they can listen to tunes, so this guide may be of service to you.
Via: Engadget
When I heard that Adidas was making a tennis shoe with a built-in microprocessor, I got really excited. At first, I thought it could be something to gauge my mileage and speed. Maybe it could even monitor my heart rate. It could at least tell me if I’m running too slow to finish the race on time, right?
No…
No, that would make too much sense. Instead, the microprocessor automatically senses the environment and whether you are running and walking and adjusts the springiness of the shoe to match it. I’m feeling a rant coming on, but I’ll just say that I don’t need that. The running shoes that I have right now are perfectly springy without a microprocessor.
Since the Engadget review didn’t make it clear, I had to sit through the tiresome animation at the Adidas 1 website to make sure that it didn’t actually have some useful features like pace monitor or GPS tracker. A stopwatch might have been helpful too, but it doesn’t seem to have even that.
At the cost of $250 a pair, you could buy a cool pair of running shoes and a GPS tracker. That’s the computer/shoe combination that I would recommend.
I have seen so many different calculations for Target Heart Rate that I really don’t know what’s true anymore. For years, it was always:
220-Your Age=Target Heart Rate
I vaguely remember a heart rate that took into account your current weight. I saw another one that used your BMI. I remember another one that had a different rate for women than men. I remember another one that took into account your fitness level. I’ve read about others that take into account your resting heart rate. There are now so many potential calculations for your Target Heart Rate that I can understand if you might be tempted to just forget about it.
One day, I decided that they all were bogus…
Red Octane just announced that they are releasing a Playstation 2 version of the game In The Groove. You can log this in the “Yet Another Reason To Consider the Playstation Format” book. Roxor Games released an arcade version of this game originally in 2002. The gameplay requires more elaborate dance moves than the Dance Dance Revolution format. The arrows look the same, but there are times when some of them are required to be pressed by your hands (think Twister at a quicker pace).
They are planning on integrating a Fitness Mode that tracks the amount of calories you burn. Hopefully it will be more accurate than the DDR calculations. This mix will have over 70 songs, which is a large enough number to keep the most dedicated players occupied for months. Finally, there is great excitement that Red Octane is the company that will be releasing this product considering the high quality of their dance pads. They didn’t provide a release date, so I am waiting excitedly to hear more.
Fitness Magazine has teamed up with NEC to provide a Fitness Phone. For a monthly fee of $9.99 a month, you can have your personal trainer and dietician in your phone.
I don’t know what I think about this. I have a hard time imagining someone bringing their phone into the gym and referring to it for each exercise, checking them off as they go. I could do the same thing with Palm software, but I don’t want to bother bringing the thing into the gym with me. A piece of paper is so much easier and even that is a burden when I’m going from machine to machine.
Additionally, some gyms have cracked down on camera phones in locker rooms and this phone has a fully functional camera (including a light for low-light situations ?!). This just seems like technology gone wrong. It might be a helpful reminder to the forgetful, but when you are truly dedicated to putting yourself first, a Post-It Note will do.
I talked before how Pump It Up has a PC version of its game. I was going to buy that for my weight loss incentive in March (and I still might). I just found out that they are also releasing versions of the game for both Xbox and Playstation 2 in June 2005! Yippee! That makes me even happier now!
This was just announced in mid-February, so they are really pushing to get these games on the market quickly. Not quick enough for me. I want it now!
Powered by WordPress
(c) 2004-2017 Starling Fitness / Michael and Laura Moncur
Buy Walking Videos