Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Exciting news from the gym front

On Friday last week I didn't work out because my gym was installing all new cardio equipment. I was so excited to try out the new stuff (and apparently there are more new things coming, but they couldn't do it all at once).

I've now tried the elliptical without arm swinging action, the elliptical with arm swinging action, and the recumbent bike. Here are my reviews:

Elliptical without arm swinging action:
Pros: silent, higher off the ground, easy-to-read display
Cons: 2-inch-high lip around the outsides of the feet things. This is bad because it forces my feet to be in a smaller area on the feet things and my hips don't like it.
Verdict: The older ones were better (for me, anyway)

Elliptical with arm swinging action:
Pros: silent, higher off the ground, easy to read display, handles are bigger around and easier to grasp, display area is better designed to hold water, cd man, and magazines/books
Cons: The lip thing is there too, but the arm swinging ellipticals have a bit of a different motion and my hips didn't mind so much.
Verdict: New = good

Recumbent bike:
Pros: exactly like the old bikes, but with slightly cushier seats (and better pedal straps)
Cons: None
Verdict: Slightly improved version over the old ones

There are also new treadmills, regular stationary bikes (with cushy seats!), and rowing machines, and the gym is supposed to get new stair climbers (that I never use, because I hate stair climbers) and some kind of crazy cardio step/treadmill machine for which they had a prototype 6 months ago and I actually liked it. I'm looking forward to those.

In other news, my fitlinxx thingy emailed me last week and told me that in March I lifted 178,800 pounds/22.3 African Elephants and I burned 14,771 calories or 40.4 ice cream sundaes. So I suppose that's pretty good. April hasn't been as productive as March, but now that it's getting warmer my appetite has diminished significantly and I'm naturally eating less, so I don't feel the need to kill myself in the gym.

Did you hear that, QIR? I'm not killing myself in the gym this month!

1 comment:

Yank In Texas said...

I love some good gym news. I like both elliptical thingies, though I'm on a non-arm swinging kick now. I'll have to switch soon though. I'm sposed to do stairmaster stuff for my leg and all but I HATE those things too.

Pilates and yoga rocks though.