A little over a year ago I pieced together my own 'low-rent' Peloton spinning cycle. This cheap spinning bike has become an invaluable tool managing my so-called fitness, as well as the pain my degenerating discs provide. Read the rest
Without changing anything else in their daily routines, three people set out to discover how much they could strengthen their bodies just by doing 100 squats every day for 30 days. For those inspired to start their own 30-day challenge after watching this video, here’s the proper way to do a squat:
Strava is a popular fitness route-tracker focused on sharing the maps of your workouts with others; last November, the company released an "anonymized" data-set of over 3 trillion GPS points, and over the weekend, Institute for United Conflict Analysts co-founder Nathan Ruser started a Twitter thread pointing out the sensitive locations and details revealed by the release. Read the rest
I grew up in a family where competition and winning meant everything. Throughout my childhood, my sister and I were pitted against each other in games of chance and skill, with prizes of heavily salted snacks for the victor. Over the years, we fine-tuned our gamesmanship, for whomever won was punished rather than rewarded. Decades later, we have a whole new generation of competitors in our family, but this year my sister and I tried something different. We introduced a trojan horse for fitness called the Stealth Core Trainer.
The trainer is just a device on which to plank upon, but its competitive nature makes it fun. For those who don’t know, a plank is an exercise where you hold your body up by your forearms and toes as straight as possible.
Planking exercises different parts of your body, but to someone who’s just been given a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, it’s rather boring. Below is an image of my nephew multitasking in his natural habitat. Note that he's eating cereal while video chatting with a friend WHILE playing a networked game with yet another friend.
It's a ridiculous site to behold and a difficult one to tear him away from. Luckily, the Stealth Core Trainer [Amazon link] Read the rest
A year ago I decided to piece together my own Peloton-compatible stationary spinning cycle, I still love it. I never have to go to a gym full of PEOPLE. Read the rest
The yoga pants are $42, and the swim shorts are $45; either one will turn you into a Renaissance hunk. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest
I decided I needed to start exercising again, and spinning--cycling on a stationary bike--is the best choice for me. Peloton looked awesome, but too expensive. I figured out a way to enjoy the features of Peloton I care about, without spending the big bucks. Here's how you can do it, too. Read the rest
Do you like the idea of riding horses? Do you want to get fit? If so, check out "Horse Riding Fitness Ace Power!," a portable, flexible A-frame on wheels with a seat to allow the operator to sit on it like a horse—then perform squats, thrusts and pelvic oscillations, to whatever ends or purposes the operator intends. Read the rest
The best part of the video is the increasing happiness and confidence you can see on his face as his body transforms. (Isou Dw)
The Facial Fitness PAO is a rubbery device with weighted wings that you put in your mouth and then, apparently, shake up and down to train your face muscles to look young. [via JWZ] Read the rest
Starting with this awesome shot of Bettie Page pretend-ladyfighting with a sexy foe, here are some wonderful photographs of female wrestlers from the 19th century through the 20th, all the way up through the '80s and '90s. Read the rest
Romanian 5-year-old Claudio Stroe does pushups with his hands and feet on glass bottles. Claudio's older brother, Giuliano, is a World Record-setting child body builder and gymnast himself. Below, see one of Giuliano's impressive demo videos from 2013, when he was also around 5.
Redditor Pastlightspeed cosplayed Chel from the game Portal and put together an amazing Portal Gun out of cardboard and paint for less than $10. The Imgur set shows some details of the build, and the incredible fact that she ran a 5K while dressed in full Portal drag and carrying her sidearm. Read the rest
Hot on the heels of FitBit's new app-connected wristwatch pedometer, here's Nike's new $150 Fuelband SE. Features include an ambient light sensor, Bluetooth 4 pairing to a new iOS smartphone app, and time display for when you're not thinking about calories or footsteps. New are the neon accent colors in green, red and pink, better weather-sealing, and the alleged ability to ignore 'false positive' flicks of the wrist. Read the rest
Some people are naturally better than others at pulling off the elusive pull-up, writes Kyle Hill at Scientifica American. For them, it's all about mass-to-arm-length ratio — ideally, you want a low mass and short arms to minimize the amount of energy it takes to pull your body upwards. But Hill insists that the less genetically fortunate can learn to do pull-ups, too. It's just something that takes dedicated training. Read the rest
David Pogue reviews two fitness armbands, the Nike Fuel Band and the Jawbone Up. He prefers the former, but appears impressed by neither.
The Nike band is polished and professional, it has that awesome screen and the wireless Bluetooth syncing is the way to go. This pony performs its trick brilliantly, but it’s still just one trick. The Up band is saddled by its goofy headphone-jack syncing method and rather weird software design.
I looked at these recently and came to the same conclusion: the wristband pedometers are great gadgets, but limited by bizarre software. Nike's, for example, wants you to focus on some weird "Nike Fuel" metric based on "oxygen kinetics"--even if it isn't bullshit, it couldn't look more like it.
So, even though I wanted a band, I instead bought the Fitbit One, a traditional 'clip on' model. I'm not ready to recommend it yet, as I'm just a few days into using it, but at under $100 it's cheaper than the other brands. It does come with a wristband into which it can be slotted, but the band is stretchy black gymwear and clearly not as pretty as the gadgets from Nike and Jawbone. The Fitbit One's wireless background sync works perfectly—the Jawbone wristband doesn't even have wireless, and must be taken off and plugged in!— and it's cool to be able to just jump into a smartphone app and see how long I've slept, how much I've eaten, and estimates of far I've walked and how many calories I've burned today. Read the rest
