Low users and the deconditioned are a big problem for the fitness industry, because people who don’t use their gyms soon find better ways to spend their dues money. Which is why you may see interesting new equipment showing up at your health club or local YMCA.
Right now, about 1,000 of the 14,000 commercial gyms in the United States have installed some form of high-tech gadgetry designed to make working out more fun and satisfying. “Anything to keep people exercising,” says Maeve McCaffrey, a spokeswoman for the industry’s trade group, noting that former gym members outnumber the 29.5 million who currently belong.
One way to combat the high attrition rate is to distract users from the pain and boredom of exercising. Some 300 health clubs have outfitted cardiovascular equipment with Web-surfing stations made by a company called Netpulse. The Netpulse station looks like an ATM that’s been forcibly attached to the front of your stairclimber or bike: it’s a touchscreen monitor and computer housed in a hulking, black kiosk. On the screen, you can read e-mail, surf Web pages over a high-speed connection, listen to your own music CDs, watch TV or, if you’re a purist, look at a simulation of the little red dots that track your workout. The whole contraption is positioned within arm’s reach so you can use a finger to scroll around, change the channel or type. “Our members love the novelty and they also say it saves them time,” says Milena Pizarro, a membership representative at Crunch Fitness in Manhattan, who uses the Netpulse machines herself to e-mail health and fitness information to her mom in Miami. If you’re bold enough to sign up for a PIN number, the Netpulse database can keep count of how many miles you’ve biked over time and, during special promotional periods, lets you redeem those miles with airline incentive programs.
Another approach is the electronic personal trainer. Three companies–FitLinxx, Schwinn and Technogym–have developed computer-based replacements for the dog-eared workout card and golf pencil. “People need more handholding,” says FitLinxx CEO Keith Camhi. “For the 99 percent of us who don’t have a personal trainer, the computer can do a lot.” In order to get started with any of these systems, someone at your gym has to help you set up a personal profile. It includes information like your target heart rate when using cardiovascular machines, and the weight settings and number of repetitions for the strength-training equipment–things like the lat pulldown and the leg press. When you step up to a machine, you enter a PIN number. The machine identifies you (by name, in some cases), instructs you to pump iron and keeps track of your sweaty exertions.
This technology does have a dark side: now that you’ve told the gym equipment what you’re supposed to be doing, just like some musclebound guy in a tight shirt, it won’t let you forget it. The lat-pulldown machine, for example, beeps once to let you know that you’ve completed an exercise correctly. If you don’t do it right or try to cheat, it beeps like a stuck car alarm. To add insult to embarrassment, the offending repetition won’t count toward your final tally. Gyms are also using these computers to alert them to low users. “We call them and say, ‘Where are you? What’s going on?’ " says Joey Krieps at the East Valley YMCA in Porter Ranch, Calif. Thank goodness for another high-tech gadget: caller ID.
A High-Tech Exercise1. Track your data:
- Talk to your trainer: The gym staff can leave you little notes–and increase your workload automatically.
3.Turn off your brain: Just strap in and do what the machine says.
