Fitness is on most people’s mind, given it’s New Year and resolution have some possibility of still being adhered to – it is only nine days into the year after all.
I know fitness is good for you and I have in the past had periods of reasonably fitness. Frankly these days it’s doesn’t sound that appealing – it feels more like a chore, hence I don’t do it.
My interest in fitness was raised slightly when I saw the Reebok CyberRider exercise bike that connects to your PC, Playstation 2 or 1 and enables you to use your peddling as the input to games. Peddle fast and win the race.
I’ve got a vague memory of a rowing machine that had a screen mounted in front of rower that graphically simulated you rowing down a river. It was a few years ago so the graphics were pretty unrealistic, ie blocky and slow.
Now that high-powered graphic processing is now cheap and freely available, in the form of the current gaming consoles, it seems like a good idea to utilise it.
I’ve always found going to the gym to be more enjoyable with friends, it enhances the element of competition. When you exercise by yourself at home, there’s no-one to impress with how fit you can appear to be to the other people in the gym, hence the healthy second-hand market in exercise bikes, rowing machines, etc. Add this to how much better some of the Xbox games (eg Ghost Recon) are when played on Xbox Live linked up to players Worldwide.
I would have thought the future of these machines would be when you’re linked up with others and exercise against exercise-buddies from around the World.
It’s being demonstrated this Saturday at Brent Cross. I find the idea of going to Brent Cross horrifying, never mind on a Saturday but in the interest of research I plan to go along and find out how good it is. I’ll let you know.