Elliptical Trainer

Ellipse. My belly is starting to look like one. Come to think of it, many parts of my body are. My face, on the contrary, is giving up its natural form for something more round.

I remember in "Over the Hedge" a kid working out on this gizmo while RJ (Bruce Willis) was saying "animals eat to live, humans live to eat". It's one of my favorite quotes of all times Only later I learned that the gizmo was properly called an elliptical trainer.

Fitness

Ever since quitting my local fitness club (located a whopping 3 kilometers from me), I was looking for more appealing alternatives. I tried jogging a few times, and while I liked it a lot, it couldn't overcome my everlasting sloth.

Winter came and I started thinking more along the lines of indoors fitness. 20 push-ups and pull-ups every morning are a great to test your will (I failed the test after a couple of months of it), but not a real way to keep you in shape.

Gizmos

Treading mills. Bikes. Free weights. I shrugged at those words. Now elliptical trainers are something else. They are new, they look cool, they have a few nice features up their sleeves, etc.

I first looked them up in on-line stores last summer. It was pretty clear that a(a) choosing "the right one" could take a year of browsing, (b) I could only afford the low-end crap with a stride length for kids.

I made up my mind

Starting December 31, 2007, all in spite of the (Orthodox) Christmas Lent, were several weeks of massive overeating for me - up to a point when my face and liver felt (and looked) like during the times I was doing heavy booze. I had to find a way out. Quick.

Of course, the right answer would be "eat less, walk more", or something like that. But who are you kidding? So last Saturday I called at a local sports mall and went into the first shop that had lots of elliptical stuff. Everything was cheap, but crappy. The only thing that looked somewhat real was a Vision Fitness X6200, priced at $2200. Way out of my budget (I don't want to spend all that money put away for open-source donations, do I :D).

I went home and found a very similar X6100 model sold for $1750. Still pricey. I had to team up with my dad (once a radiating example of military fitness, now a long-time fitness wannabe) on this one.

After the choices were made, it all went surprisingly quickly. I ordered the thing in an online shop on Sunday night, confirmed the order on Monday morning and had it delivered on Monday night. The only frustration - I got a 2006 make, while there's a 2007 available with some new nice (but mostly useless) features.

At last

Anyway, I assembled it in an couple of hours (which was a small adventure in itself, with some unfriendly references towards the Chinese makers) and tested it that same night. I got to tell, the first minutes of trotting on an elliptical trainer feel a lot like sex. The feeling passes, alas, and you get a more lasting impression of something between jogging and skiing.

Will it keep me exercising?

Knowing myself, I can only say I'm grateful for the couple of hours of working out I already got. I'm also quite grateful for a terrific opportunity to dump the loose $500+ I had. With the current balance on my debit cards, I'll have to stick to peanuts if I really want to get fat. Peanuts are not half as much fun as all the costly "diabetic"/"fitness" sweet crap you crave for with a few extra bucks on your hands, the crap that promises you health and muscles, but gives you nothing but sore liver and big lumps of fat.

After all, the one thing I know for sure is that electrical gizmos like this one are a stupid answer to a stupid way of life. Get all the shit out of your mind, stop eating craploads of food, take a walk every day - that's the grand Gandhian way of living a long, healthy and happy life. Alas, I've been very successful playing the role of a sick little slothing prick lately.

Good luck to you in finding ways out of your own dead-ends!

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