Walking Videos for your treadmill
After working out in gyms all my adult life I have been only too aware of their main downfall: the serious boredom that can kick in within seconds of entering any gym.
TV Shows
The industry’s solution to this has been to stick up as many televisions as possible playing your favourite shows. Now it has been proven that by watching these shows your performance will drop. I believe this is the last thing you want when ideally you should be completely focused to get the biggest benefits from your training.
Music
Other gyms have taken it upon themselves to play lots of very fast bass music to motivate you. This has been proven to keep your performance levels higher. But higher than what? Higher than when you train watching your favourite show? Yes, definitely. Higher than when you are reading whilst training? (Believe me, I have seen it) Yes, most definitely. But would your performance be higher than if you were exercising outside or in a sport environment, or even to music that motivates you? No, I doubt it.
Push Yourself
It is so important that you get the most from the time you have dedicated to your training. Firstly you want to see results and secondly you don’t want to waste your time on something that is actually not doing a lot for you. Surprising as it may seem you really do need to push yourself in the gym; it should never be easy.
Walking Videos
So you can imagine my delight, when I stumbled across an article by one of our blogrolls (starling-fitness), who have come up with Walking Videos for you treadmill. Now I think you would be unlikely to find a gym that will play it for you on one of their screens, but it is ideal for home training. With the introduction of LCD screens on ‘top of the range’ treadmills I don’t think it will be long before you will be able to bring in your own DVD to play on your own treadmill.
More Fun
Then why stop at the treadmill? How much more would you push yourself on the bike if it felt as if you were actually cycling somewhere, or for the more competitive, in a race – even against the great Lance Armstrong? You could have the same on the rowing machine and crosstrainer; how much more fun would the gym be? I know there have been similar pieces of equipment already released but they have often chosen rather dubious computer graphics over realism.
Whilst we wait for the fitness industry to catch up with the demand, I suggest that if you want to get into exercise or you know how good walking is for you then you treat yourself to a treadmill, get a TV in front of it and buy yourself one of these DVD’s.
