There is one capacity that virtually everyone who exercises shares with the superbly fit athletes who fill the ranks of professional sports. And that is the capacity for boredom. Whether you`re pedaling along a bike path, jogging near the beach or pumping iron to high-decibel music in a health club, working out on a regular basis is easily one of the most excruciatingly boring activities on the planet.
The natural high derived from working out goes only so far. The now generation needs visual input to complete the experience.
”Instant visual feedback is what motivates people,” said Michael Hoffman, the spokesman for LifeFitness Inc. of Irvine, Calif. ”We are a video society. There are kids out there today who were born after video games were invented. What are they going to look for in an electronic workout machine?
They have to have video input.”
But when Dr. Keane Dimick invented the precursor of today`s LifeCycle in the late 1960s, he was hardly concerned with video input. He just wanted the pedals to rotate smoothly. Dimick, however, let his invention languish and didn`t pursue the commercial possibilities.
A decade later, LifeFitness president Augie Nieto offered a clunky, pale green LifeCycle for public consumption. But it wasn`t until a few years later that the marriage was made that would drag exercise into the video age.
In 1984, video game maker Bally Manufacturing Corp. bought LifeFitness for $4 million. In two years, LifeRower was on the market, followed three years later by LifeStep. The trade mark of all the machines? Electronic circuits and readout panels that provided the exerciser with constant visual feedback on level of exertion, calories expended, duration of workout and words of encouragement.
For the first time in history, workout machines became user friendly.
”The average person is still intimidated by a gym,” said Hoffman.
”They think, `God, I have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to work out here.`
But the electronic gym is like having a robotic, personalized weight coach.” LifeFitness isn`t alone in the brave new world of electronic gyms. Its primary competitor, Randal Sports/Medical Products Inc. of Kirland, Wash., has a nifty machine of its own: The StairMaster.
Since its introduction in the mid-1980s, StairMaster has become the dominant stepping machine.
Gym rats use the term StairMaster to describe stepping machines as generically as people now say Kleenex and Xerox. StairMaster, too, is laced with electronics that provide visual feedback.
But now that the electronic workout machines are becoming the preferred method of exercise for millions of Americans-use of stepping machines has increased 500 percent from 1987 to 1990-the machines have come under intense scrutiny from medical groups.
If the readout says ”calories expended: 245,” how accurate an account is that? And what of meters rowed, steps climbed, pounds lifted, miles pedaled?
The American College of Sports Medicine has studied the data. Its tests indicate that readout accuracy varies from machine to machine and company to company from anywhere between 50 and 93 percent, with most of the numbers hovering in the 80 percent range.
The ACSM, however, has become a believer in the machines. In 1990, the ACSM revised its health guidelines and recommended resistence (strength)
training in addition to aerobic exercise. That change is a virtual endorsement of electronic workout machines.
But where will those workouts occur? Virtually every gym in the country has at least a few electronic machines and now all 28 of the National Football League teams use LifeFitness equipment, but Hoffman is convinced that the future of the machines resides in home use.
Although the machines aren`t cheap ($1,598 for a LifeCycle, $2,395 for a LifeStep and $2,695 for a LifeRower), about 50 percent of LifeFitness` $70 million in annual sales comes from private buyers. StairMaster ($2,195) sells only 25 percent of its machines to the home market, but that percentage is growing.
While the mechanical aspect of the machines will change only slightly, the electronic components will become even more sophisticated.
LifeFitness is testing pulse-monitoring systems that will be built into the handle or grab bars of the machines. In addition, some clubs already have a set of LifeCycle machines that can be networked together so that the riders can compete against each other on a mountain bike circuit that is displayed on a television screen.
In the not-too-distant future, the machines will be designed to hook into home televisions and then everyone can have a personalized, robotic trainer.
And why not? The machines are simple and remarkably effective.
”Even if you`re Aunt Edna from Wisconsin,” Hoffman said, ”you can get buffed on these machines.”
