State of the art
Serious fitness improvements require a serious – or better still, a serious and smart – fitness machine. Three of the best face off
Want to get ‘hulked’ at home? You need an exercise machine. But which type do you need? We select three of the best to help you find out which is best for you
Welcome to a new era of indoor training: smart fitness. Long gone are the days when you’d thump away on a treadmill for 30 minutes, towel down, glug back a bottle of sugary liquid and think you were Steve Cram. Fitness technology, thanks in part to the likes of cycling’s marginal-gainsobsessed Team Sky, is big business. With so much at stake, investment has led to some very smart fitness machines entering the consumer market.
Now, when you’re working out it can feel like you’re inside a computer game – you’re
competing against a rival on a screen, who could be a friend or stranger. A treadmill gives you a full body workout, not just your legs; you’re getting a marathon PB-targeted cardio workout and a strength workout in one hit/HIIT. You can cycle up the Tour de France’s notoriously hurty Alpe d’Huez without leaving your front room. All the while, live graphs and exhaustive data give you instantaneous performance feedback.
These machines are often designed by Olympic athletes, so in turn training is hyperreal, smart and so much more effective. You can’t hide from the bombardment of
analytical data going in and out of your smartphone. There are many ways in which this increased connectivity and immersion means you train better and get fitter. You want to improve on that last workout and work on your weaknesses, because ultimately the workouts have been, well, not fun exactly (if so, they were probably too easy), but enjoyable nonetheless, and more satisfying. These machines and their experiences make you want to go back for more, and that’s how fitness is improved. But where do these cycling, running and rowing machines excel, and which is right for you?